THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 35
repeated the same process. If we wish to be cynical, we may say that the real process is that of opposing politicians saying to themselves, " we want the offices," and then casting about for the kind of promises most likely to get votes. Even if reduced to this moral minimum, the process of a political campaign involves a serious study of the social situation and its chief needs. The results have been summed up in the party platforms with which as their credentials candidates have appealed to the country. The most conscienceless politician that ever helped to frame a party policy did form an estimate, after its kind, of the situation to which the policy must apply. Whether the process is performed with intelligence and public spirit, or in ignorance and selfish- ness, does not affect the main point. In some fashion or other, the most practical men are performing the process incessantly. The masses are accepting the results such as they are, of these estimates of the situation.
Now, the essential sociological problem in this connection is : What ought we to consider, and what means will enable us to con- sider it, in order to do with the utmost possible wisdom and justice what is being done less wisely and less justly every day?
We have had to confront repeatedly and in turn, in the cen- tury and a quarter of our national existence, situations which enforced the question : Shall we adopt a program of localism or of nationalism, of militarism or of commercialism; of national isolation or of international alliances; of protection or of free trade ; of emphasis upon industry, or politics, or public improve- ments, or education, or morals, or religion, or territorial expan- sion? We have faced these questions with such wisdom as we had. The function of sociology is to assist in making our methods of approaching such questions more nearly adequate to this task which incessantly recurs.
We confront today in the United States the most prodigious technical problems which any people ever had to solve, i. e., in the largest sense of the term "technical" 6 and almost every- body is so impressed with the importance, to himself or others, of one or more of these technical questions, that few are left to
- Vide note, p. 30.
