Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/21

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THE INDUSTRIAL TYPE OF SOCIETY.
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nal nature, are settled there." What little is told us of tribes living in the Shervaroy Hills is, so far as it goes, to like effect. Speaking generally of them, Shortt says they "are essentially a timid and harmless people, addicted chiefly to pastoral and agricultural pursuits"; and, more specifically describing one division of them, he says, "They lead peaceable lives among themselves, and any dispute that may arise is usually settled by arbitration." Then, to show that these social traits are not peculiar to any one variety of man, but are dependent on conditions, may be recalled the before-named instance of the Papuan Arafuras, who, without any divisions of rank or any hereditary chieftainship, lead harmonious lives controlled only by the decisions of their assembled elders. In all which cases we may discern the leading traits above indicated as proper to societies not impelled to corporate action by war. Strong centralized control not being required, such government as exists is exercised by a council informally approved—a rude representative government; class distinctions do not exist, or are but faintly indicated—the relation of status is absent; whatever transactions take place between individuals are by agreement, and the function which the ruling body has to perform is substantially limited to protecting private life by settling such disputes as arise and inflicting mild punishments for the small offenses which occur.

Difficulties meet us when, turning to civilized societies, we seek in them for the traits of the industrial type. Consolidated and organized as they have all been by wars actively carried on throughout the earlier periods of their existence, and mostly continued down to comparatively recent times, and having simultaneously been developing within themselves organizations for producing and distributing commodities, which have little by little become contrasted with those proper to militant activities, the two are everywhere presented so mingled that clear separation of the first from the last is, as said at the outset, scarcely practicable. Radically opposed, however, as is compulsory coöperation, the organizing principle of the militant type, to voluntary cooperation, the organizing principle of the industrial type, we may, by observing the decline of institutions exhibiting the one, recognize, by implication, the growth of institutions exhibiting the other. Hence, if, in passing from the first states of civilized nations, in which war is the business of life, to states in which hostilities are but occasional, we simultaneously pass to states in which the ownership of the individual by his society is not so constantly and strenuously enforced, in which the subjection of rank to rank is mitigated, in which political rule is no longer autocratic, in which the regulation of citizens' lives is diminished in range and rigor, while the protection of them increased, we are by implication shown the traits of a developing industrial type. Comparisons of several kinds disclose results which unite in verifying this truth.