Shall we not come to teaching every one, by concrete social experience, a community spirit that shall be the basis at once of citizenship, of morals, and of religion? Why should not the simple principles of democracy and righteousness and worship be so humanized and popularized in the life of the community and the school that the children shall almost unconsciously learn and practise them? Do we not need, in these matters, an alphabet of a few letters to replace the Chinese writing of the past?
I may add that if every man had a suitable task of his own, for which he was properly trained, and could see the relation of that task first to larger work of the same sort and then to the general human life, it would build up religious faith in a way not otherwise possible. Our work is the most vital part of us, or should be, and if we can see it as one with the ordered life of humanity, and divine a connection with the Greater Life, we shall hardly lack religion. Religion is, for one thing, the sense of a man’s self as member of a worthy whole, and his sense of self is formed by his striving. On the other hand, anarchy of endeavor breaks up faith.
It is perhaps unnecessary that we should agree upon definitions and programmes of culture. Although it is always some kind of enlargement of the spirit, it must vary with individuals and communities. The higher literary culture, calling for mastery of languages and long immersion in the great traditions, is only for a few, and yet it is essential for some kinds of leadership and should always be open to those who show an aptitude for it. The group culture in connection with the schools is of great promise as affording a simple and genial way of spiritual growth in which the least intellectual may share. The study and practice of specialties is capable of indefinite development on the culture side. In short, culture is itself a complex organic process which ought to permeate life, but can never be reduced to rules.
CHAPTER VIII
OPPORTUNITY AND CLASS
EXISTENCE AND INFLUENCE OF CLASS—INHERITANCE CLASSES IN RELATION TO THE FAMILY—HAS INHERITED PRIVILEGE A SOCIAL VALUE?—HOW FAR INEQUALITIES OF WEALTH COULD BE PREVENTED BY EQUAL OPPORTUNITY—ELIMINATION OF ORGANIZED MISERY—EQUAL OPPORTUNITY A GOOD WORKING IDEAL—WHAT KIND OF EQUALITY IS ATTAINABLE
All societies are more or less stratified into classes, based on differences in wealth, occupation, and enlightenment, which tend to be passed on from parents to children; and this stratification creates and perpetuates difference in opportunity. No one needs to be told that extreme poverty may mean ill-nurture in childhood—resulting perhaps in permanent enfeeblement—impaired school work, premature leaving of school, practical exclusion from higher education, stunting labor in early years followed by incapacity later, a restrictive and perhaps degrading environment at all ages, and a hundred other conditions destructive of free development. A somewhat better economic situation may still involve disadvantages which, though not so crushing, are sufficiently serious as bars to higher function.
Professor H. R. Seager, a careful economist, has suggested that the population of the United States may be roughly divided into five classes or strata, which are largely non-competing, in the sense that individuals are in great part shut off from opportunities in classes above their own. The highest class, enjoying family incomes of more than three thousand dollars a year, has the fullest opportunity. In the second class, with incomes of from one thousand five hundred dollars to three thousand dollars, the boys begin work at sixteen or seventeen years, and are handicapped in starting by lack of resources and outlook. They are too apt to choose work which pays well at once, but does not lead to advancement, and only a very small per cent rise above the condition of their parents. A third class, with incomes of from six hundred dollars to one thousand five hundred dollars, is marked by early marriages, large families, early withdrawal from school, and lack of outlook. Its members are rarely able to compete for the better positions with classes one and two. A fourth class, of wage-earners at from one to two dollars a day (at the time the book was published), shows the same conditions accentuated. Their necessarily low standard of living and its mental and social implications bar a rise in the world, and they compete, as a rule, only for that grade of work to which they are born. The fifth is a misery class, in which the most destructive and degrading conditions prevail.[[14]]
I am not sure that this analysis is not somewhat one-sided, especially in allowing too little influence to the relaxing effects of ease upon those born in the upper class, but it is certainly nearer the truth than the optimistic dogma that in this free country every one has an equal chance.
And lack of pecuniary resource is by no means the only thing that restricts opportunity and confines one within a class. To grow up where the schools are poor and the neighborhood associations degrading, to belong to a despised race, to come of an immigrant group not yet assimilated to the language and customs of the country, or simply to have vicious or unwise parents, may prevent healthy development irrespective of economic resources.[[15]]
The existence of inherited stratification is due to the fact that the child is involved in the situation of the family. As long as the latter surrounds him, determining his economic support and social environment, there must be a strong tendency for the condition of the parents to be transmitted. And this merging of the child in the family is in itself no evil, but arises naturally out of the functions of the family as the group charged with the nurture of the coming generation.