Topics for Debate
1. The period of residence required for the naturalization of aliens should be extended to more than five years.
2. Aliens ought to be debarred from employment on national, state, and municipal work.
3. The national government should take jurisdiction over and prevent all racial discrimination by the state.
CHAPTER III
ECONOMIC FACTORS AND ORGANIZATION
The purpose of this chapter is to show how wealth is created and how it is distributed among the people.
Primitive needs and modern needs.
The Economic Needs of Man.—The most elementary needs of human beings are for food, clothing, and shelter. Until these are satisfied no higher needs can develop. In the lowest stages of barbarism men are content with the satisfaction of these elementary needs alone; but as they obtain a greater mastery over nature and are able to supply these wants more easily, other and higher wants arise within them. As men and women become more intelligent and more refined, they grow discontented with the primitive and coarser kinds of food; they seek more presentable clothing than the skins of wild animals; they replace their rude huts with substantial houses of wood. Step by step, as the human race has advanced in civilization, its needs have become more numerous and more varied. Purely material requirements being satisfied, other and higher demands arise. The spiritual and social aspirations make their appearance. As mankind passes each stage in civilization it finds, through the growing control over nature, that purely material wants can be satisfied with less and less exertion. Men gain their daily bread today with infinitely less effort than in primitive times. The chief reason is that they have learned to act collectively in mastering the forces of nature; in other words they have achieved a high degree of economic organization.
How the economic motives promote progress.
The Economic Motives.—Self-preservation is the first law of nature. The primeval instinct in man is to look out for himself, to protect himself from hunger, thirst, and hardship. This, for the moment, is more important to him than the satisfaction of his social and civic needs. Hence the economic motive, the instinct which prompts him to seek the means of getting a living, is extremely strong. This instinct the lower animals possess as well, but it does not carry them beyond the satisfaction of elementary wants. The birds of the air and the beasts of the fields have never enlarged or raised the scale of their needs beyond the simple requirements of food, drink, and shelter. No matter how easily obtainable these become they make no progress to anything higher. But mankind, endowed with superior mental faculties and a spiritual nature, does not rest content with the easy earning of a livelihood. The economic motive prompts men and women to move on, to achieve wealth, to procure luxuries, and to gain such happiness as the possession of worldly goods can bring. This economic motive, deeply implanted in humanity, has been a great incentive to progress in civilization,—probably the greatest of all incentives.