On the Reasons Why Man Is Not Altogether a Brute. To me this seems a mere waste of words. A society based on contract is a society of free and independent men, who form ties without favor or obligation, and cooperate without cringing or intrigue. WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER. Some are urged on the ground that they are poor, or cannot earn a living, or want support while getting an education, or have female relatives dependent on them, or are in poor health, or belong in a particular district, or are related to certain persons, or have done meritorious service in some other line of work than that which they apply to do. They are impertinent and out of place in this free democracy. Therefore, when we say that we owe it to each other to guarantee rights we only say that we ought to prosecute and improve our political science. Through various grades of slavery, serfdom, villeinage, and through various organizations of castes and guilds, the industrial organization has been modified and developed up to the modern system. The wealth which he wins would not be but for him. The notion of property which prevails among us today is that a man has a right to the thing which he has made by his labor. There are no such men now, and those of us who live now cannot arrange our affairs by what men will be a hundred generations hence. Persons and classes have sought to win possession of the power of the state in order to live luxuriously out of the earnings of others. Now, the aid which helps a man to help himself is not in the least akin to the aid which is given in charity. If employers withdraw capital from employment in an attempt to lower wages, they lose profits. Attention is all absorbed by the clamorous interests, the importunate petitioners, the plausible schemers, the pitiless bores. His answer, in brief, is that, the minute we suggest that social classes owe anything to eachother is the minute that some become the dictators of others and . Society can do without patricians, but it cannot do without patrician virtues. He is suffering from the fact that there are yet mixed in our institutions medieval theories of protection, regulation, and authority, and modern theories of independence and individual liberty and responsibility. William Graham Sumner (October 30, 1840 - April 12, 1910) was an American clergyman, social scientist, and classical liberal.He taught social sciences at Yale Universitywhere he held the nation's first professorship in sociologyand became one of the most influential teachers at any other major school.. Sumner wrote extensively on the social sciences, penning numerous books and essays . Some nations spend capital on great palaces, others on standing armies, others on iron-clad ships of war. Here is a great and important need, and, instead of applying suitable and adequate means to supply it, we have demagogues declaiming, trade union officers resolving, and government inspectors drawing salaries, while little or nothing is done. It is not permanent. Who dares say that he is not the friend of the poor man? The feudal code has, through centuries, bred a high type of men, and constituted a caste. What shall we do with Neighbor A? One great means of exceptional profit lies in the very fact that the employees have not exercised the same foresight, but have plodded along and waited for the slow and successive action of the industrial system through successive periods of production, while the employer has anticipated and synchronized several successive steps. At one time, no doubt, feudalism was an organization which drew together again the fragments of a dissolved society; but when the lawyers had applied the Roman law to modern kings, and feudal nobles had been converted into an aristocracy of court nobles, the feudal nobility no longer served any purpose. This is a social duty. For our present purpose, it is most important to notice that if we lift any man up we must have a fulcrum, or point of reaction. These persons are united by community of interest into a group, or class, or interest, and, when interests come to be adjusted, the interests of this group will undoubtedly be limited by those of other groups. Such expansion is no guarantee of equality. If we refuse to recognize any classes as existing in society when, perhaps, a claim might be set up that the wealthy, educated, and virtuous have acquired special rights and precedence, we certainly cannot recognize any classes when it is attempted to establish such distinctions for the sake of imposing burdens and duties on one group for the benefit of others. If, however, the boy should read many of the diatribes against "the rich" which are afloat in our literature; if he should read or hear some of the current discussion about "capital"; and if, with the ingenuousness of youth, he should take these productions at their literal sense, instead of discounting them, as his father does, he would be forced to believe that he was on the path of infamy when he was earning and saving capital. The upper class consists of all the determined hard workers, while the lower . It was said that there would be a rebellion if the taxes were not taken off whiskey and tobacco, which taxes were paid into the public treasury. I have in view, throughout the discussion, the economic, social, and political circumstances which exist in the United States. The reader who desires to guard himself against fallacies should always scrutinize the terms "poor" and "weak" as used, so as to see which or how many of these classes they are made to cover. The penalty of ceasing an aggressive behavior toward the hardships of life on the part of mankind is that we go backward. Our legislators did. what social classes owe to each other summary and analysis. We have here Sumner presenting a model of society and political economy that fits nicely with Mises's own, as presented in essays such as "The Clash of Group Interests" (available in Money, Method, and the Market Process). Yet who is there whom the statesman, economist, and social philosopher ought to think of before this man? under freedom, no group is obligated by force to serve another. Society, therefore, does not need any care or supervision. The state gives equal rights and equal chances just because it does not mean to give anything else. If, now, we go farther, we see that he takes it philosophically because he has passed the loss along on the public. Jobbery is any scheme which aims to gain, not by the legitimate fruits of industry and enterprise, but by extorting from somebody a part of his product under guise of some pretended industrial undertaking. Persons who possess the necessary qualifications obtain great rewards. He could make a boat, and use the winds as force. He is passed by for the noisy, pushing, importunate, and incompetent. 13 I. It is an especially vicious extension of the false doctrine above mentioned that criminals have some sort of a right against or claim on society. The fact is that there is no right whatever inherited by man which has not an equivalent and corresponding duty by the side of it, as the price of it. "The poor," "the weak," "the laborers," are expressions which are used as if they had exact and well-understood definition. The same piece of capital cannot be used in two ways. The last fact is, no doubt, the reason why people have been led, not noticing distinctions, to believe that the same method was applicable to the other class of ills. Those things are all glorious, and strike the imagination with great force when they are seen; but no one doubts that they make life harder for the scattered insignificant peasants and laborers who have to pay for them all. Sumner was one of the founding fathers of American sociology who explored the relationship between the individual and the state from an individualist and free market perspective. It has been said, in answer to my argument in the last chapter about the Forgotten Women and thread, that the tax on thread is "only a little thing," and that it cannot hurt the women much, and also that, if the women do not want to pay two cents a spool tax, there is thread of an inferior quality, which they can buy cheaper. So he is forgotten. This, however, is no new doctrine. Later the demos, rising into an independent development, has assumed power and made a democracy. Upon this, however, I will not insist. He has to pay both ways. The forces know no pity. The pressure all comes on C. The question then arises, Who is C? The consequence is that those who have gone astray, being relieved from nature's fierce discipline, go on to worse, and that there is a constantly heavier burden for the others to bear. Today I'd like to share a few pages of a book I am reading. It has been confused by ambiguous definitions, and it has been based upon assumptions about the rights and duties of social classes which are, to say the least, open to serious question as regards their truth and justice. It accepts the burden, but he must be cancelled from the ranks of the rulers likewise. The greatest reforms which could now be accomplished would consist in undoing the work of statesmen in the past, and the greatest difficulty in the way of reform is to find out how to undo their work without injury to what is natural and sound. I cannot see the sense of spending time to read and write observations, such as I find in the writings of many men of great attainments and of great influence, of which the following might be a general type: If the statesmen could attain to the requisite knowledge and wisdom, it is conceivable that the state might perform important regulative functions in the production and distribution of wealth, against which no positive and sweeping theoretical objection could be made from the side of economic science; but statesmen never can acquire the requisite knowledge and wisdom. If we could get firm and good laws passed for the management of savings-banks, and then refrain from the amendments by which those laws are gradually broken down, we should do more for the non-capitalist class than by volumes of laws against "corporations" and the "excessive power of capital.". Then, again, any man who can take care of himself and his family is in a very exceptional position, if he does not find in his immediate surroundings people who need his care and have some sort of a personal claim upon him. Every step of capital won made the next step possible, up to the present hour. introduction 7 i.onanewphilosophy:thatpovertyis thebestpolicy 13 ii.thatafreemanisasovereign,butthat asovereigncannottake"tips"..28 iii.thatitisnotwickedtoberich;nay, even,thatitisnotwickedtoberich- erthanone'sneighbor 43 iv.onthereasonswhymanisnotalto- getherabrute 58 v.thatwemusthavefewmen,ifwewant strongmen 72 vi.thathewhowouldbewelltakencare ofmusttakecareofhimself-\ If we can acquire a science of society, based on observation of phenomena and study of forces, we may hope to gain some ground slowly toward the elimination of old errors and the re-establishment of a sound and natural social order. Among respectable people a man who took upon himself the cares and expenses of a family before he had secured a regular trade or profession, or had accumulated some capital, and who allowed his wife to lose caste, and his children to be dirty, ragged, and neglected, would be severely blamed by the public opinion of the community. Capital owes labor, the rich owe the poor, producers owe consumers, one sex owes another, one race owes another, this country owes that country, and so on ad infinitum. Human society tries hard to adapt itself to any conditions in which it finds itself, and we have been warped and distorted until we have got used to it, as the foot adapts itself to an ill-made boot. In this country, where workmen move about frequently and with facility, the unions suffer in their harmony and stability. The danger of minding other people's business is twofold.
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other - amazon.com The real victim is the Forgotten Man againthe man who has watched his own investments, made his own machinery safe, attended to his own plumbing, and educated his own children, and who, just when he wants to enjoy the fruits of his care, is told that it is his duty to go and take care of some of his negligent neighbors, or, if he does not go, to pay an inspector to go. If some of them are economical and prudent in the midst of a class which saves nothing and marries early, the few prudent suffer for the folly of the rest, since they can only get current rates of wages; and if these are low, the margin out of which to make savings by special personal effort is narrow. Certainly there is no harder thing to do than to employ capital charitably. We have a great many social difficulties and hardships to contend with. That it requires energy, courage, perseverance, and prudence is not to be denied. There was one natural element which man learned to use so early that we cannot find any trace of him when he had it notfire. Rights should be equal, because they pertain to chances, and all ought to have equal chances so far as chances are provided or limited by the action of society. In time a class of nobles has been developed, who have broken into the oligarchy and made an aristocracy. The reason for this lies in the great superiority of personal management over management by boards and committees. Their sympathies need regulating, not stimulating.