We want to know more about these excursions to Europe. Are they always cultural? We want to know more about the life of Mrs. Astorbilt in her Paris home. We want to know more about the employment conditions of the “Four Hundred.” Perhaps a law should be made in the interests of health limiting the number of continuous hours spent in certain social activities. We want to know more about the lives of boys and girls in wealthy boarding-schools. We desire to find out just how a working girl spends $8 a week, but we also wish to learn just how the dividend receiver spends $800 a week. The poor need visiting housekeepers to instruct them, but may not the wealthy need visiting home-keepers?
The unexplored continent of sociology is the life of the wealthy. It is to the interest of the health and well-being of society that a careful and dispassionate study be made of this subject.
Clarence D. Blachly.
Chicago.
A CALL FOR LEADERSHIP
To the Editor:
There is a widespread opinion among social and industrial workers that the unequal conditions existing in human society are going to be levelled: that equality of opportunity and the more equitable distribution of the necessities of life are to be accomplished by a system of “passing it on.” In this way, the social burden, instead of resting where it does now, on the lowest stratum of the population, will be placed on broad shoulders better able to bear the load.
Do not such solutions as employers’ liability, workmen’s compensation, the minimum wage, reduced hours of employment and better occupational conditions all mean an increase in the cost of producing the necessaries of life? Do they not tend to make more grave one of the vital problems of the hour?
There seems to be a feeling abroad, of which many are possessed, that there is somewhere a great fund of capital on hand, which only needs equitable distribution to allow all now engaged in industry to live in comfort, with only a moderate amount of exertion.
This is the result, probably, of seeing large rows of figures, stated as the wealth controlled by financial institutions, or in the possession of individuals. Most of these figures refer to pieces of paper, either evidences of debt, or titles to ownership of lands, factories or other tools of trade. Not one of these is available for furnishing the necessities of life, without human labor applied at the right time and place under competent direction.