THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY 479
legal aspects of dependence have long been studied, and a mass of information has been accumulated. In addition to this a dis- tinct discipline has grown out of the demand for a more com- prehensive and adequate treatment of the whole system of charity. It has gone so far as to require a name, and, out of deference to scientific custom, a learned Greek compound has been offered for criticism charitology. In the few text-books 1 thus far written to present in systematic form the causes of dependence and the regulative principles which direct the most successful methods in philanthropy, the sociological standpoint has been distinctly adopted, the chapter on the subject in economics having proved wholly inadequate.
The group of industrials or wage-workers has been clearly differentiated as a complex class in modern society. This process of differentiation has been due to advances in technique, to the division of labor in industry, the rise of cities, and the resulting geographical and cultural separation of the operatives from the managers. The antagonisms, hatred, and friction incident to this separation have aroused the solicitous attention of states- men, economists, and ethical philosophers. The conditions of life and culture in this group offer a fairly well-defined field for a branch of social technology. The economists have already erected a discipline which some of them call " social economics" and others simply "the labor question" (die Arbeiterfrage] , or " the social question." But no thinking man can rest satisfied with a purely economic, or even economico-legal, treatment of the interests of this large group and the interests of society in their welfare. While we insist that the economic and legal factors must be worked out by experts in economics and jurisprudence, we must also insist that, side by side with them, all other social factors must be considered, and that the difficult task of har- monizing all data of special experts must be in fact, if not in name, a branch of social technology.
In a similar way we might study the artist group, the profes- sional class, the salaried officers of corporations and governments,
X A. G. WARNER, American Charities; C. R. HENDERSON, Introduction to the Study of Dependents, Defectives and Delinquents (second edition in preparation).
