688 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
preventive of revolution and social discord. But "altruism" is a vague term, and the application of the golden rule is not as simple a matter in a complex industrial society as men like Count Tolstoy imagine.
Whether the hopes and expectations placed in the twentieth century with reference to the solution of our social and economic problems are altogether reasonable we do not need to consider. A strong case can be made out against the cheerful assumption that, the nineteenth century having attended to the questions of production, exchange, rapid locomotion and communication, markets for surplus goods, and the opening of vast tracts of territory, the twentieth will be free and willing to turn its atten- tion to the question of fair distribution of wealth, and the removal of unnecessary and unjust poverty. But that may be left on one side. Admitting the danger and the disposition to arrest or ward it off, what are the best means of combating practical Nietszche- ism ? Just as it is idle to cry peace when there is no peace, so it is vain to preach altruism to a society living and toiling under conditions which would bankrupt any individual or any class that tried to live up literally to the golden rule.
There is an old, but ever new, question which has divided reformers, namely: whether moral advance, moral education character, in a word must precede the improvement in social conditions, or whether it is useless to expect moral conduct in an environment unfavorable to it, and therefore the proper business of reformers should be the modification of the condi- tions of life, the eradication of social wrongs and abuses. But the practice of the century has certainly proceeded under the tacit acceptance of the second theory. Not only extra-legal reformatory movements, but even the attempts of legislators, or seekers of legislation, have aimed at amelioration by means of institutional changes and modified treatment of property and person. It is but needful to allude to the anti-corn law agita- tion in England, to the improved treatment of criminals, to the old-age pensions plans and experiments, the question of proper housing of the poor, recognized as vital and even " burning" alike by the Tories and Liberals of Great Britain, and the admitted
