Social Progress and Problems
THE great social forces that have wrought the marvellous transformation in our national life show no signs of slackening. On the contrary, their momentum seems to increase with the years. Each new step forward impels to swifter strides. History is being made at a speed that would bewilder the Fathers of our country, who were themselves no laggards when love of freedom indicated patriotic duty. In the very stress and eagerness of our ambition to hasten the millennial era that seems so temptingly within reach, it is possible that complex schemes and worthy aims that clash with each other are sometimes fated to confuse rather than promote the end in view. Our progress has surpassed the dreams of the seers; but in its wake have followed a multitude of problems hard indeed to solve, often baffling to simplify or diagnose aright. Side by side with education still stalks ignorance; increased wealth has not yet out-paced the poverty that defies extinction; disease and pain tread in the footprints of the fortunate well-born; with unexampled lavishness the fast multiplying temples of religion and learning are being endowed, though the appalling voices of hunger, savagery, and depravity still echo in the darkness. Material prosperity coexists with material misery, and spiritual ideals are sorely racked by the seeming failure of life-long self-sacrifice and devotion to the noble task of radically reforming the conditions under which these social ills continue to flourish.
What gives the touch of divine grace and hope to our glorious but incomplete civilization is the universal sympathy that reaches out to help the weak and ill-developed and the ill-born. The history of the century glows with the benign flame of practical philanthropy, not in its almsgiving manifestation only, but in its efforts to prevent social evils by legislative and other feasible means. No stone can be justly cast at the religious and other organizations of the period on the charge that they labor only in cloudland. The second half of the last century saw a great, genuine revival throughout Christendom, a resolute determination to have works keep pace with faith, to see to it that creeds should be expressed in deeds. The stimulus given by the churches to secular philanthropies, and by lay agencies to the churches, has been one of the most cheering facts of recent history. Its good results can never be summed in dollar totals. Statistics are unable to reveal the unseen influences of this vast tidal wave of Good Samaritanism, which, as we have said, is gaining rather than slackening its beneficent force.
The sense of personal rights to liberty and prosperity has developed a powerful movement that has permeated society, leavening and levelling, controlled only by the natural checks of civilization. The poor prisoner dwells in a paradise compared with the unfortunate inmate of the old-time jails. The golden mean of penal treatment has perhaps not yet been attained. Excesses of vindictive punishment, even with fatal torture, are reported together with prison laxities that mock the name of justice. Relics of Puritanism here and there dull the beauty of life, while elsewhere the accepted proprieties of a seventh-day of rest are openly discarded in favor of a Parisian Sunday. Contrasts flourish on all hands, which at least denotes an era of rapid progress; and where this prevails, the greatest good of the greatest number is sure to be attained, sooner or later.
Education for all has been one of the grand causes of national progress. Less than a century ago comparatively few of the working folk could read.
" One of the reasons for the growth of popular education has been the spread of democratic ideas and of the application of industry to science. It began to dawn upon the people how profitable it would be for each inhabitant of a country to be able to communicate with or receive communications from others through ability to read and write. This ability, once gained and used, would break down the barriers which cut off a large part of the people from the influence of the current of the intellectual life of the nation, and also in a measure would efface the inequality which is caused by the neglect to provide any kind of instruction for the masses. There were charity schools supported by the churches or other charitable organizations before the beginning of the last century, but these were few and far between. Whatever education was given was granted as a boon. To-day education is regarded as a right in a civilized country, and an enlightened government appreciates the fact that the illiterate cannot become good citizens. Mental development leads to moral development, and influences physical improvement."