760 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
however, only after a transition period in which the population, when first released from the discipline of a rigorous environment, seem to have carried their self-indulgence to as much of an extreme as they had previously carried their work. They boasted how they could stand the paralyzing effects of self-indulgence as they had boasted how they could stand the paralyzing effects of hard labor. To assert themselves over some form of agitation was still their essential impulse and idea, surviving from the time when conditions made agitation inevitable. When these conditions pass, the ideal of the mean gradually asserts itself.
Turning now to the way in which conditions in the social environment determine impulses and ideas we note, as one factor of great importance, the degree of inequality. Where the eco- nomic classes are very unequal, as are the classes engaged in the manufacture of steel, disputes take the form of arrogant state- ments by employers and fearful acquiescence on the part of the workmen. ^'^ As the economic classes approach equality, attentive cognition becomes more important. In the anthracite-coal strike of 1902 the miners, powerless and submissive while disorganized, became strong and shrewd when united. The condition most favorable to attentive cognition is a position of slight, but not hopeless, inferiority. Compare the arrogance of the anthracite operators as seen in the conference at the White House,^® with the shrewdness and self-control of the miners' leaders at the conference and throughout the strike. History affords striking instances of superior attentive power in a lower class. The f reed- men of Rome were in a position of inferiority to the nobility and they gradually displaced the nobility and became masters of the world.^* The Jews, long on the defensive against the domination of gentile nations, have developed remarkable shrewd- ness.
Business shrewdness always keeps within the limits of certain rules of the game. When an antagonist is greatly inferior to his opponent he may forget the rules of the game and drop to the
"Pittsburg Survey. Vol. III. ""Mitchell, Organised Labor, p. 387.
- Sumner, Folkways, p. 286.
