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It is not the province of this Conference to discuss all social problems. Such questions as municipal administration and functions, international law, monopolies, trade-unions, and co-operation belong in assemblies specially devoted to these interesting topics. But it is our duty and our present task to consider the bearing of our own labors with the defective classes on the larger movements for betterment. From economist and politician we may learn the influence of industrial and legal movements on charity and correction; but, from our side, we may study the effect of relief and reform on the conditions of wage-workers, city populations, political control, and religious movements. We cannot isolate our labors from "those of our fellow-citizens.

Theory. -- It will be remembered that this Conference grew out of the Social Science Association, and for a time had no independent existence. This connection can never be broken. Our problems are social problems. Each one must see the place of his own work in the entire system; that is, we must acquire a theory of the situation.

Well did Dr. Felix Adler say: "Experience without theory is blind. Theory, it is true, without experience is without feet to stand on. But experience without the guiding and directing help of theory is without eyes to see." (1)

It is confessedly difficult to discover the law, the tendency, the goal, of a complicated social movement. But, unless we do succeed in this scientific quest, we are drifting, not navigating. Our efforts, however well meant, must be blind, contradictory, conflicting, and reciprocally destructive. (2) Millions of dollars and many good lives are wasted in this conflict of unscientific philanthropy, which grasps at passing shadows and straws and divides the benevolent. Social science is born when men consciously and intelligently grasp the purpose of their strivings and deliberately seek for guiding principles. Just at this point lies the difference between a savage and a civilized community. (3)

(3) See Ratzenhofer, "Die sociologische Erkenntniss," S. 244.

The Costs of Civilization. -- The progress of society is due to variation. A monotonous people makes no advance. The multiplication of numbers is not progress. The child imitates ancestors, and, grown to manhood, trains his offspring to follow the antique copy. It is the new kind of a plough, not the freshly painted plough, that marks a higher development of invention. It is the new kind of man which is the essential characteristic of a progressive epoch. But variation implies difference, inequality, and comparison. The evolution of a higher type is impossible without tension, struggle. The rewards must go to superior skill and intelligence, or we shall have mediocrity and degradation. This struggle of competition, which appears to be necessary to progress, implies some kind of rejection of those who cannot compete. The very means of progress become their destruction. The more rapid the movement, the more difficult is it for the slow and defective to find a place. In a certain sense we may regard pauperism and defect as part of the price paid for civilization.

Hence the gap in the Utopian reasoning of those amiable but visionary social doctors who scorn the slow and tedious methods of charity, and put contempt on the very name "philanthropy." Better, they tell us, with noble and fierce eloquence, to abolish poverty at once. Change the form of government, introduce a new industrial system, destroy the despotism of trade, "socialize" manufacture and agriculture, and we could soon dispense with prisons and orphanages. A student of the long processes of organic evolution may well doubt this splendid vision. He may enjoy the optimistic dream, but his sober judgment and his science forbid him to live in dreams. The causes of defect are not all in industry and in government. They exist under all modes of industry and government. They are largely biological, deep in our relations to nature. A swift and superficial change in law or modes of employing labor would not touch these causes. They would remain and be as active as before.

I am not making an argument against the single tax or socialism or any other scheme. It is my single purpose to indicate that under any form of economic and legal institutions some of the most powerful causes of degeneracy might still exist. If some form of socialism shall be adopted by our posterity, they will need all the knowledge we are gathering. Unquestionably, advance in medicine, surgery, sanitation, hand in hand with improved institutions for education and regulation, will gradually diminish the force which carries some members of the race downward. We rejoice in this prospect. We are working toward that brighter day. But we must not weaken our energy or lull our vigilance by excessive and irrational optimism.

It is safe to say that there is not now in sight any proposition for amelioration which would within a few generations give reasonable ground for dissolving the National Conference of Charities and Correction. We should all be glad to celebrate the death of all the institutions here represented if we could be assured they were or could be made superfluous.