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. Washington[XXIV-18] urged that if the Negro shows himself industrially efficient and morally worthy, the prejudice against him will disappear. W. E. B. DuBois[XXIV-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.