Chapter XXIV The Trend of Applied Sociology
In the preceding chapters the discussions have dealt primarily with the philosophic and psychologic phases of social thought. Another important phase of our field is applied sociology. The hosts of individuals who have been engaged in dealing directly with societal problems have learned valuable lessons from their personal experiences. Sometimes they have labored according to false theories; often they have scorned theories entirely. At the other extreme, the world has often accepted fine theories, but made a pitiable spectacle of itself in falling away from its idealistic professions.
As the term implies, applied sociology treats of techniques for improving the quality of human living. The best techniques have been developed experimentally, but by persons who have combined a high estimate of social theory with practical programs of activity. The useful concept of social technology, a more accurate term perhaps than applied sociology, was given to society by Charles R. Henderson, whose balanced thinking, sane judgment, and important ameliorative activities made him the founder of this branch of sociological science. Dr. Henderson’s name is synonymous with a practical interpretation of both democracy and Christianity, with the spirit of vigorous yet kindly reformation in penology, with the concept of prevention in philanthropic endeavors, and with justice and love in all the fields of human achievement. There are many other important names in the list of those persons who helped to found applied sociology; for example, such individuals as Canon Barnett, Arnold Toynbee, Jacob Riis, Jane Addams, and many other social welfare saints.
Poverty and crime have been the two chief phenomena with which welfare work has been concerned. Until the present century the attempts to meet the problems of poverty have been largely remedial. Jesus said that the poor are always present in any age of society. St. Francis of Assisi, tiring of monastery life, sought out the poor in the natural walks of life, and dedicated himself in their behalf.
For centuries England has experimented with solutions for the problems of poverty and pauperism. She has learned that when she cares too assiduously for the poor she encourages the spirit of pauperism and increases the numbers of dependents. When she provided liberal aid for illegitimate children, she found that illegitimacy was furthered.
England has had a series of important literary leaders who have interested themselves in behalf of the poor and outcast. Dickens drew minute word pictures of poverty. Carlyle, the iconoclast and individualist, pierced repeatedly the shams of society which are partly responsible for the perpetual existence of social misery. In beautiful diction Ruskin spoke in behalf of social justice. In similar fields, France has her Hugo and Balzac; Germany, her Hauptmann; Russia, her Tolstoi and Gorky; Scandinavia, her Bjornson, Ibsen, and Strindberg. Individuals of this type, however, cannot be considered social technologists. They have directed public opinion to specific social problems, but rarely offered technological programs of practical value.
Since 1900, the leaders in social technology, such as C. R. Henderson,XXIV-1 Sidney and Beatrice Webb,XXIV-2 and E. T. Devine,XXIV-3 have made clear the specific conditions under which the poor may be permanently aided.XXIV-4 Remedial care will always be necessary, but it must be offered in ways that will not encourage anyone to make a living by begging. The prevailing thought today regarding poverty is in preventive terms. The individual should be shown how to help himself up the economic pathway. Education will make the individual efficient and safeguard him against falling into a chronic state of pauperism.
Above all else, social technology urges the establishment of justice in economic conditions. As shown in Chapter XIV, Henry George, in his Progress and Poverty, made a fundamental analysis of one set of causes of poverty, which he found in the unjust factors in the economic system. He showed how ownership in land may be traced back to force. Shall the first person who acquires a section of land be allowed to fence it in and to keep out all other persons unless they pay him a price that rises rapidly as the number of other persons increases?XXIV-5 Why is there increasing misery amid advancing wealth? The larger the city the greater the degree of squalor—this was George’s perplexing observation. Material progress does not improve the condition of the lowest classes. Prosperity under the present economic system appears to be a heavy wedge driven into society. The individuals who are below the line of cleavage are crushed down; those who are above this line are hoisted upward into positions of luxury and affluence.
Henry George, despite the large number of followers which his ideas have today, was probably in error in believing that to take the ownership of land out of the hands of individuals, through the method of the single tax, would prevent poverty. However, no one should be blind to the fact that increasing land values result from mere increase in population. Either the birth rate or immigration increases population and sends up land values, which in turn is accompanied by a rising scale of rents with an elevated cost of living and increased poverty.
The history of human thought concerning crime has run a vicissitudinous career. It was not until the days of John Howard and Beccaria that a truly scientific approach was made to the problem. John Howard (1726–1790), sheriff of Bedford, became interested in criminals. He visited jails throughout England. He traveled widely in Europe, usually at his own expense, studying the causes of typhus fever and endeavoring to effect a more humane treatment of offenders.
Beccaria (1735–1794), an Italian criminologist, published in 1764 a remarkable book, Crimes and Punishment. Beccaria protested against attempting to repress crime by the use of fear. Retaliation is an entirely inadequate motive for administering punishment. Torture is inhuman. Neither retaliation nor repression meets the problem. Reformation was the concept with which Beccaria startled Europe. Punishment should be administered so as to reform.
In modern days the names of Cesare Lombroso (1836–1909) stands out prominently in the field of criminology.XXIV-6 Lombroso was a determinist, finding in heredity and environment all the causes of crime, and relieving the individual of moral responsibility. The mental defective, the alcoholic, the frantically angry are irresponsible for the crimes they commit. By defining one irresponsible group after another the Lombrosan school has practically included all individuals in this classification, leaving no one responsible for his conduct.
The remedy for crime, according to Lombroso and his followers, is found in society. Society is responsible for the criminal acts of its members. If society should surround all individuals from infancy with a favorable environment, then crime would end. In the writings of Garofalo, Ferri, de Quiros, Gross and other Continental criminologists, a broader point of view is usually taken, making the responsibility for crime to rest on three factors, heredity, environment, and individual morality. The margin of choice, and therefore of individual responsibility, is usually made very slender. European criminological experts, and even American writers, such as Parmelee, have commonly minimized the importance of moral character and the accountability of the individual.
In the United States the trend of interest has been penological. Since the days of William Penn, who had been a prisoner in England, American thought has centered on the problem of prison reform. Barrows and Brockway devoted their lives to the reorganization of prison procedure. Wines and Lane show lucidly the trend in penological thought, paying splendid tribute to the achievements of Z. R. Brockway in establishing the Elmira Reformatory (New York).XXIV-7
The fundamental principles of the Elmira procedure are as follows: (1) The average prisoner can be reformed. (2) Reformation of the prisoner is the duty of the state. (3) Prisoners must be considered as individuals and accorded the treatment which each needs in order to bring him to a normal attitude of life. (4) The prisoner’s reformation requires his own co-operation in the process. (5) The prison must have the power to lengthen or shorten the sentence according to the offender’s stage of reformation. (6) The entire process of reformation is educational, giving the offender opportunity for psychical, mental, and moral growth. (7) Punishment for crime is administered in the discipline and labor, which are unremitting and exacting.
In recent years Thomas M. Osborne has been developing the honor system and self-government among prisoners.XXIV-8 The idea is dramatised by Burleigh and Bierstadt in Punishment.XXIV-9 The conception is that kindly administration and the personal touch of love will win the offender’s heart and mind, and effect a reformation.
The last twenty years have seen a remarkable development of the concept of prevention of crime. This theory, however, takes the problem back to pre-adult years, to the adolescent, to childhood, and even to the pre-natal years of the specific individual. The establishment of the juvenile court, with the success of Judge Ben B. Lindsey, has served to call attention to the fact that criminals are made as a rule before they reach the age of twenty-one.
The contributors to recent thought about delinquency, such as Jane Addams, Breckinridge and Abbott, W. R. George, Ben B. Lindsey, Mrs. Louise de Koven Bowen, Flexner and Baldwin, are pretty largely agreed that the causes of delinquency, and hence of criminality, are as follows: (1) The defective home—made defective by illness, poverty, shiftlessness, ignorance, immorality, desertion, divorce, death—is the leading single causal element. Nearly all criminals begin their careers as disobedient sons. The law of obedience and self-discipline, if not observed in the home, is learned later only at the expense of anti-social and criminal acts. (2) Mental defectiveness often causes delinquency. The mentally defective child, if energetic, has great difficulty in withstanding the evil temptations of life. He or she has bodily passions that are further developed than his mental inhibitions. In this connection the public school has an important function to perform in detecting mental defectives and in segregating them under special educational care. They should be segregated also by sexes, so that they may not reproduce their kind, and they should be kept under educational and institutional direction throughout their lives. They can be made useful and happy under a guarded environment. (3) Civic neglect is a third cause of delinquency and crime. Young people are released from the public schools, often without proper home training and supervision, and drift about in a highly complex urban environment, full of commercialized and vicious devices for preying upon the curious and the unsuspecting. (4) Social injustice, for example in industry, arouses feelings of hatred of class against class, and leads to criminal acts. (5) Moral thoughtlessness and religious indifference are common causes. A moral and religious attitude gives a balanced expression to personality, wholesomeness and obedience in the home; and a deep, constant, and abiding interest in public welfare is an invaluable preventive of sin, vice, and crime.
A growing conception relative to juvenile courts is that a considerable portion of the work that such courts are now called on to perform belongs to the public schools. The compulsory attendance, child welfare, and continuation school departments may well assume responsibility for and direction of many youth who now become court charges. It is urged that a fully organized procedure of constructive work and play activity under the supervision of the schools will greatly reduce juvenile delinquency.
Another cause of juvenile delinquency is parental negligence. It is believed by many authorities that problems of this character should be taken care of through the domestic relations court rather than in the juvenile court. Another causal factor is the growing disrespect for parents on the part of children, that is, the increasing degree of failure of children to appreciate the significance of the concept of obedience.
In regard to labor problems, social technology has made notable contributions. Child labor is a term which refers to the employment of adolescent children for wages, when such children are thereby deprived from normal opportunities of mental and physical growth. Children should learn to work, even at unpleasant tasks, but when at an early age they are taken out of or quit school and become gainfully employed, they are deprived of a normal adolescence; they and society both lose.XXIV-10
The problem of women in industry is due to the migration of millions of women from the home into industry. While women are entitled to equality of opportunity with men, they are often unmindful that constitutionally they are not fitted to perform all the tasks that men are doing; that if they fail in the bearing and rearing of children rationally, the race dies; and that, if they neglect to make the home attractive, the family as an essential social institution is undermined.
The labor problem, when applied to men, brings forth a multiplicity of contradictory opinions. The idea of industrial democracy is the storm center. While praising modern capitalism for its stimulus to initiative and for its large-scale enterprises that have been highly beneficial in many ways, the social technologist pronounces modern capitalism undemocratic. He declares that it must purge itself or be supplanted by another industrial order; it must take cognizance of social changes and adjust itself accordingly or be routed.
The injustice in modern capitalism is often stressed in social technologic thought. Only one factor, wealth, is represented in the management of business. The skilled or unskilled laborers, often “the hardest working partners” in the business, are not represented. Applied sociology, unlike socialism, would keep industry in the hands of individuals. The idea has been best developed, perhaps, by a social theorist, Professor A. W. Small. Labor and capital must both have representation on boards of directors, if capitalism is to prove that it is not undemocratic.XXIV-11
Tripartite management of industry is a current phase of industrial thought. Where employers and employees have reached a common ground of co-operation, they have often joined forces in collusion against the public and the consumer. The employer agrees to a rise in wages for the employee, and the employee to an increase in dividends, providing he receives a portion of the added returns—meanwhile the public is apathetic or rages impotently. The best thought today is urging that on boards of directors and managers all three interested parties shall have representation, namely, labor, capital, and the public.
It is a current opinion that the failure of capitalism to democratize itself will result in the rise of socialism by revolutionary means. If capital with its one-sided control of industry is supplanted by labor with another type of control, it is doubtful how much will be gained. The labor standard is manifesting itself as a class standard, and at times arbitrarily. To have society controlled by labor standards, no matter under what form of socialism they may appear, will not guarantee progress. The labor classes, the capitalist classes, the professional classes—all must rule, and unselfishly for the welfare of society.
The current socialist thought ranges from a radical bolshevist theme of a dictatorship of the proletariat to a conservative state socialism, like that advocated by John Spargo. Bolshevism has the earmarks of class autocracy. Progress cannot be secured by a social order in which the least educated and trained are in control. On the other hand, it is not clear that state socialism, with its governmental control of interest-producing capital and rent-producing land, will best guarantee progress. The socialization of individuals will probably be more effective than the socialization of industries.
The tendency is toward the elimination of profitism. This negative thought, it is claimed, will relieve capitalism of its worst evils, and allow the educational process of socializing individuals to go forward.
The concept of social insurance has been given a remarkable reception since 1882. Social insurance was introduced as a means of pacifying labor and of making it contented under the rule of capitalism. It was admitted into governmental economy by Bismarck as an agency of forestalling socialism. It spread rapidly. It has met with two setbacks. (1) In the first place it has acquired such momentum that capitalism sees it as the entering wedge of a genuine socialism. (2) In the second place social insurance is guaranteeing so much security to the workingman that he is constrained at times to sacrifice his initiative and even to become shiftless, saying in effect to himself, “I’ll be taken care of anyway.” It is this second type of antagonistic thought that indicates the real weakness in social insurance. It would be better to have a society in which the workingmen as a class would have an ample opportunity of caring for, and be stimulated to care for, their old age and for periods of disability. For the individual exceptions, special provisions could be made.
The unemployment problem has produced many reform theories. Unemployment insurance, now being made the subject of experiment, is probably not reaching the main causes. The causal factors are many and deep-seated; they range from individual shiftlessness and mental defectiveness on one hand, to economic injustice and social callousness on the other.XXIV-12 The prevailing thought urges a more efficient training of the individual; the increasing of the workman’s opportunity to enlarge his personality through each day’s work; the development of industrial democracy and justice; and a complete socialization program.
Another set of problems concerning which applied sociology is endeavoring to find solutions relates to the family, feminism, marriage, divorce, and housing. Professor George Elliott HowardXXIV-13 and Dr. Edward WestermarckXXIV-14 have traced the development of the family and marriage throughout human history. The primitive relationships between sexes have been described by many anthropological writers. A history of the American family has been written by A. W. Calhoun.XXIV-15 Single volume treatments of the family as a social institution have been made by BosanquetXXIV-16 and Goodsell.XXIV-17 These works essentially agree that the family is an evolutionary product, that the primitive family centered about the mother and child, that patriarchalism introduced a high degree of masculine arbitrariness, and that the family is at present undergoing marked changes whereby the spirit of democracy is gaining ground.
In the new found spirit of freedom, woman has sometimes been captivated by the desire to follow man into all the man-made occupations. Sex nature predestines woman to the chief occupation or profession of all, that of motherhood. For woman to rush headlong after men into industry may turn out to be not liberty, but license and deterioration. Current social thought protests vigorously against the idea of women being household drudges, and also against women wasting their time in pluming themselves or in idling away their days in dolls’ houses, supported dependents of men. Women are entitled to learn vocations and to live constructive lives, in an atmosphere of the largest possible freedom consistent with the development of themselves and the race. On the other hand, any movement which weakens the home as a societary training institution apparently defies the laws of social advance.
The housing problem is provoking urgent thought. With the rise of large cities the economic order favors exorbitant land values and extraordinarily high rents. The social increment goes into the hands of the few. The flat and apartment house life often favors pet bulldogs rather than children, and decreases the efficiency of the home as a social institution. These untoward tendencies, furthermore, are being supplemented by an attitude of more or less helpless apathy on the part of the public.
Another field of applied sociologic thought is represented by the terms, race problems, immigration, and naturalization. These concepts are all outgrowths of the population concept which has been treated in an earlier chapter. The human race with its common origin has subdivided and wandered into all the inhabitable parts of the globe. Climate, geography, and social environment have operated to make the race subdivisions distinct and discriminatory. Race pride and prejudice have raised impassable race barriers.
In the United States the leading race problem involves the Negroes. Booker T. WashingtonXXIV-18 urged that if the Negro shows himself industrially efficient and morally worthy, the prejudice against him will disappear. W. E. B. DuBoisXXIV-19 asks that the prejudice against the colored race by the white race be removed in order that the Negro may have a fair chance to show himself capable. The Southern white people declare that the colored people must be segregated on a lower plane than that occupied by the white race. Northern people assert that the trouble lies chiefly in an undemocratic attitude of Southern white people toward the colored race. Thus the currents of thought concerning the Negro come into conflict, but without forming a common current of action.
Another phase of the race problem is conveyed by the concept of hyphenated interests. The Americanization movement has assumed momentum because of the need for a more unified spirit within the nation. Although some of the promoters of Americanization have used autocratic means, the opinion is gaining ground that the transference of the loyalty of the immigrant from his home country to his adopted country can best be effected by treating the immigrant sympathetically and democratically in all his contacts—industrial, social, political—with the people of our land.XXIV-20
The public health movement has acquired force because of the belief that only public and widespread action can remove many of the causes of disease. Tuberculosis, for example, is a disease that is caused by a microscopic germ which thrives and multiplies in the tissues of susceptible and weakened organisms. Tuberculosis and unsanitary housing conditions flourish together. The individual is often helpless, but the thought is now well grounded that public action can stamp out the breeding places of the tubercle bacilli and relieve the country of the white plague. An improved economic and educational status for the unskilled laborer and his family would also help to improve the health level of the country. Current social thought supports the contention that the real work of a physician is to keep people well rather than to cure them after they have fallen seriously ill. Preventive medicine and the public health movement are strongly urged by social technology.
Another phase of applied sociology of current significance is indicated by the term, community organization.XXIV-21 The idea of this movement originated in the failure of people to develop a democratic consciousness. Community organization refers to attempts of communities to organize themselves for neighborhood efficiency. When a community organizes its own recreations and amusements, it functions in two important directions. (1) It supplants commercialized amusements, operated for profit and often on a socially destructive basis, by community recreation, maintained by the people themselves in socially constructive ways and at a minimum of expense. (2) In participating in and building up community enterprises such as community recreation, the people of the community develop a co-operative democratic consciousness. The problem of the use of leisure time is growing in proportion to the extent that the laboring classes are winning a shorter work day. In addition to community recreation, community health movements, community newspapers, community co-operative stores, community committees for securing needed legislation and for breaking the force of economic monopoly, are attracting widespread attention. The social unit and the block system of community service, are terms which indicate variations of the community organization concept, originally a product of the need of meeting the leisure time problem constructively with the very important result of re-creating democracy.
Social technology has produced the survey.XXIV-22 The social survey, being related in its origin to the census, is an accurate method of gathering social facts, not merely facts about the numbers of people, the acreage, and the amount of wealth, but the facts about the societary assets and liabilities of a city or community, and concerning the constructive and the destructive forces. By making surveys at regular intervals of five or ten year periods, a community can determine the amount and direction of its own progress. The idea of a survey is similar to that of an inventory of a business house—to find out the gains and losses, and to plan for the future according to the verdict of the inventory.
In recent years social case work has acquired an important rank in the field of applied sociology. Social reform deals with methods for improving the whole mass of individuals and for raising the level of the entire group; social case work on the other hand stimulates individuals to improve the quality of their lives, to adjust themselves more adequately to their environment, and to transform their environments. Social case work insists that sound social reforms can be effected only on the basis of first-hand experiences with the needs of individuals who are the victims of social imperfections or their own shortcomings. Social work with individuals has provided a body of specific facts of first magnitude as a foundation for measures of social amelioration and progress; it has mirrored life which is under the harrow of circumstances; it has portrayed life where living conditions are harshest.
Applied sociology represents methods of social attack. It furthers progress by planning for society on the basis of past societal experiences and current facts and tendencies. It fulfils the demands of social telesis.
