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F. THE THEORY AND PROGRAM OF SOCIAL
CONTROL

55. The Individualistic Basis of Social Control19

BY THOMAS HILL GREEN

Freedom is valuable only as a means to an end. That end is the liberation of the powers of all men equally for contributions to a common good. No one has a right to do what he will with his own in such a way as to contravene that end. It is only through the guaranty society gives him that he has property at all. This guaranty is founded on a sense of common interests. Everyone has an interest in securing to everyone else the free use and enjoyment and disposal of his possessions, because such freedom contributes to that equal development of the faculties of all which is the highest good for all. This is the true and only justification of the rights of property. Property being only justifiable as a means to the free exercise of the social capabilities of all, there can be no true right of property of a kind which debars one class of men from such free exercise altogether. We condemn slavery no less when it rises out of voluntary agreement on the part of the enslaved person. A contract by which anyone, agreed for a certain consideration to become the slave of another person we would reckon a void contract. Here, then, is a limitation upon freedom of contract that we all recognize as rightful. No contract is valid in which human persons are dealt with as commodities, because such contracts of necessity defeat the end for which alone society enforces contracts at all.

Are there no other contracts which, less obviously perhaps, but really, are open to the same objection? Let us consider contracts affecting labor. Labor, the economist tells us, is a commodity exchangeable like other commodities. This is in a certain sense true, but it is a commodity which attaches in a peculiar manner to the person of man. Hence restrictions may need to be placed on its sale which would be unnecessary in other cases, to prevent it from being sold under conditions which make it impossible for the person selling it ever to become a free contributor to social good in any form. This is most plainly the case where a man bargains to work under conditions fatal to health. Every injury to the health of the individual is, so far as it goes, a public injury. It is an impediment to the general freedom; so much deduction from our power, as members of society, to make the best of ourselves. Society, therefore,

1o Adapted from the "Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract," in Works, III, 372–386. Edited by R. L. Nettleship (1880).

is plainly in its right when it limits freedom of contract for the sale of labor, so far as is done by laws for the sanitation of factories and mines.

It is equally within its right in prohibiting the labor of women and young persons beyond certain hours. If they work beyond these hours, the result is demonstrably physical deterioration, which carries with it a lowering of the moral forces of society. For the sake of the general freedom of its members to make the best of themselves, which it is the object of civil society to secure, a prohibition should be put on all such contracts of service as in a general way yield such a result. The purchase and hire of unwholesome dwellings are properly forbidden on the same principle.

Its application to compulsory education may not be quite so obvious, but it will appear on a little reflection. Without a command of certain elementary arts and knowledge, the individual in modern society is as effectually crippled as by the loss of a limb or a broken constitution. With a view to securing freedom among its members it is certainly within the province of the state to prevent children from growing up in that kind of ignorance which practically excludes them from a free career in life.

Just as labor, though an exchangeable commodity, differs from all other commodities, land, too, has its characteristics, which distinguish it from ordinary commodities. It is from the land that the raw material of all wealth is obtained. It is only upon the land that we can live; only across the land that we can move from place to place. The state, therefore, in the interest of that public freedom which it is its business to maintain, cannot allow the individual to deal as he likes with his land to the same extent to which it allows him to deal with other commodities. It is an established principle that the sale of land should be enforced by law when public convenience requires it. The landowner of course gets the full value of the land which he is compelled to sell, but of no other ordinary commodity is the sale thus enforced. This illustrates the peculiar necessity in the public interest of putting some restrictions on a man's liberty of doing what he will with his own. The question is whether, in the same interest, further restraint does not need to be imposed on the liberty of the landowner. Should not the state for public purposes prevent the land from being tied up in a manner which prevents its natural distribution and keeps it in the hands of those who cannot make the most of it? It is so settled that at present all the land necessarily goes to the owner's eldest son. The evil effects of this system are twofold. It almost entirely prevents the sale of agricultural land in small quantities, and thus hinders that

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mainstay of social order, a class of small proprietors tilling their own. land. It also keeps large quantities of land in the hands of men who are too much burdened by debts to improve it. The landlord in such cases has not the money to improve, the tenant has not the security which would justify him in improving. On the simple and recognized principle that no man's land is his own for purposes incompatible with the public convenience, we ask that legal sanction should be withheld from settlements which interfere with the distribution and improvement of land.

To uphold the sanctity of contracts is doubtless a prime business. of government, but it is no less its business to provide against contracts being made, which, from the helplessness of one of the parties to them, instead of being a security for freedom, becomes an instrument of disguised oppression. Men are not at liberty to buy and sell when they will, where they will, and as they will. There is no right to freedom in the sale or purchase of a particular commodity, if the general result of allowing such freedom is to detract from freedom in the higher sense, from the general power of men to make the best of themselves. The danger of legislation, either in the interests of a particular class or for the promotion of particular religious opinions, we may fairly assume to be over. The popular jealousy of law is out of date.

56. Social Reform and Self-Reliance20

BY W. LYON BLEASE

The philosophical argument against Social Reform which has most weight is that by helping individuals the State deprives them of the disposition to help themselves, and they tend to rely more and more upon the social organization and less and less upon themselves. Everything in the way of public assistance is thus regarded with suspicion. To feed school-children is to weaken parental responsibility. To raise wages by legislation is as demoralizing as to distribute doles. To offer a pension of five shillings a week in old age is to discourage thrift in youth. It is therefore better in the end. that poverty should be allowed to run its course than that a misdirected benevolence should demoralize the people. This argument, reproducing the logical individualism of the Utilitarians, has been greatly strengthened by Darwinism. Herbert Spencer has thus applied the theory of evolution to political affairs. "The well-being of existing humanity, and the unfolding of it into ultimate perfection,

20 Adapted from A Short History of English Liberalism, 327–341. Copyright by T. Fisher Unwin (1912).

are both secured through the same benificent, though severe, discipline to which the animate creation at large is subject; a felicitypursuing law which never swerves for the avoidance of partial and temporary suffering.. The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many in shallows and in miseries, are the decree of a large, far-seeing benevolence."

Yet, if there is one thing that most distinguishes modern from ancient society, and society of any kind from the disorganized existence of primitive man, it is the prevalence of the idea that we are, in some measure, responsible for the condition of our neighbors. It would be at least surprising that the salvation of the race should now be found to lie in a deliberate reaction, against the movement of countless ages, towards the state of undisciplined human egotism. A doctrine so repugnant to what we have been accustomed to regard as our better feelings requires little examination to discover its fallacies.

The evolutionary argument against Social Reform falls to the ground when it is once admitted that the individuals in contemplation are individuals organized in society, and that it is only so long as they are organized that development, as we understand it, can take place. If mankind were left to scramble for such good things as it could get without coöperation, the race would no doubt, in course of time, develop such characteristics as that competition would allow to survive. But if we erect higher standards, and require, even from selfish motives, the moral, intellectual, and physical benefits which only organization, culture, and the communication of ideas will produce, the comparison between human beings and the rest of the animate creation is useless for our purpose. Some limitation of the struggle for existence is obviously needed, if we are not to fall back to the level where only the brute qualities of strength, swiftness, and cunning are of value. Once we admit the need of a social organization, which involves a very considerable check on mechanical evolution by the survival of the fittest, the only controversy is about the extent and character of the limits on competition and not about their existence.

But the argument for Social Reform is not based only upon the possibility of altering environment so that individuals who are unfit for it may maintain themselves as long as they live. It is not the incapable who are poor. It is not only the imprudent who are overcome by distress. It is not only the idle who starve. Bad conditions of life destroy not only the inefficient, but the efficient. He is a

very dull and stupid observer who supposes that all the slovenly, debauched, and criminal men and women whom he sees around him are what they are because of their innate qualities. A bad environment does not merely destroy the inefficient, it manufactures them; and it is as reasonable to oppose social reform because it prevents the elimination of the unfit, as it would be to defend excessive eating and drinking, or sitting in wet clothes. Unhealthy eating would no doubt destroy people with weak stomachs, but for every one who perished in this struggle with environment there would be ten who survived. Bad housing and bad wages produce the same results as bad habits. An ill-fed girl becomes the mother of weakly children. Casual labor kills only after it has given birth to an incalculable amount of laziness, vice, and mental disorder. The elimination of the unfit is uncertain and capricious. The deterioration of the fit is certain and remorseless. Reform is thus the only possible means for discovering what individuals are fit in the human sense. It is only when all have a chance of survival that we can distinguish between efficient and inefficient. The reformer is only evolution conscious of itself.

This elaboration of social control is not inconsistent with such competition as is necessary for the development of character, and. for the production of the wealth which is distributed among the members of society. It is not Socialism. It removes only some of the risks of failure, and only those which are beyond individual control. No man is made less thrifty because at the age of seventy he will receive five shillings a week. No man works the better for knowing that, if he is ever ill for a month, he and his family will never be free again, or will work the worse for knowing that his home will be kept together until he is able once more to support it by his own exertions. No woman gets any virtue out of working fifteen hours a day for seven days a week, with the knowledge that even then she will not earn enough to keep herself in food and clothing without recourse to charity or prostitution, and her character will not be deteriorated when a level is fixed below which her wages cannot fall. The benefit of competition remains. The disasters inevitably attendant on it are averted. The poorer people no longer wrestle on the brink of an unfenced precipice.

We do not want to see impaired the vigor of competition, but we can do much to mitigate the consequences of failure. We want to draw a line below which we will not allow persons to live and labor. We want to have free competition upward. We do not want to pull down the structures of science and civilization; but to spread a net over an abyss. Our aim is not to abolish competition. Competition

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