This passage is excerpted from William Graham Sumner, "The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over," originally published in 1894.
Sumner was an outspoken economist and highly influential sociology professor at Yale University.It will not probably be denied that the burden of proof ison those who affirm that our social condition is utterlydiseased and in need of radical regeneration. My task atpresent, therefore, is entirely negative and critical: to5 examine the allegations of fact and the doctrines which areput forward to prove the correctness of the diagnosis and towarrant the use of the remedies proposed.When anyone asserts that the class of skilled and unskilledmanual laborers of the United States is worse off now in10 respect to diet, clothing, lodgings, furniture, fuel, and lights;in respect to the age at which they can marry; the number ofchildren they can provide for; the start in life which they cangive to their children, and their chances of accumulatingcapital, than they ever have been at any former time, he15 makes a reckless assertion for which no facts have beenoffered in proof. Upon an appeal to facts, the contrary of thisassertion would be clearly established. It suffices, therefore,to challenge those who are responsible for the assertion tomake it good.20 Nine-tenths of the socialistic and semi-socialistic, andsentimental or ethical, suggestions by which we areoverwhelmed come from failure to understand thephenomena of the industrial organization and its expansion. Itcontrols us all because we are all in it. It creates the25 conditions of our existence, sets the limits of our socialactivity, regulates the bonds of our social relations,determines our conceptions of good and evil, suggests ourlife-philosophy, molds our inherited political institutions, andreforms the oldest and toughest customs, like marriage and30 property. I repeat that the turmoil of heterogeneous andantagonistic social whims and speculations in which we liveis due to the failure to understand what the industrialorganization is and its all-pervading control over human life,while the traditions of our school of philosophy lead us35 always to approach the industrial organization, not from theside of objective study, but from that of philosophicaldoctrine. Hence it is that we find that the method ofmeasuring what we see happening by what are called ethicalstandards, and of proposing to attack the phenomena by40 methods thence deduced, is so popular.The advance of a new country from the very simplestsocial coordination up to the highest organization is a mostinteresting and instructive chance to study the developmentof the organization. It has of course been attended all the way45 along by stricter subordination and higher discipline. Allorganization implies restriction of liberty. The gain of poweris won by narrowing individual range. The methods ofbusiness in colonial days were loose and slack to aninconceivable degree. The movement of industry has been all50 the time toward promptitude, punctuality, and reliability. Ithas been attended all the way by lamentations about the goodold times; about the decline of small industries; about the lostspirit of comradeship between employer and employee; aboutthe narrowing of the interests of the workman; about his55 conversion into a machine or into a "ware," and aboutindustrial war. These lamentations have all had reference tounquestionable phenomena attendant on advancingorganization. In all occupations the same movement isdiscernible in the learned professions, in schools, in trade,60 commerce, and transportation. It is to go on faster than ever,now that the continent is filled up by the first superficial layerof population over its whole extent and the intensification ofindustry has begun. The great inventions both make theintension of the organization possible and make it inevitable,65 with all its consequences, whatever they may be. I mustexpect to be told here, according to the current fashions ofthinking, that we ought to control the development of theorganization. The first instinct of the modern man is to get alaw passed to forbid or prevent what, in his wisdom, he70 disapproves.Now the intensification of the social organization is whatgives us greater social power. It is to it that we owe ourincreased comfort and abundance. We are none of us ready tosacrifice this. On the contrary, we want more of it. We would75 not return to the colonial simplicity and the colonial exiguityif we could. If not, then we must pay the price. Our life isbounded on every side by conditions. The main purpose of the passage is to * (A) delineate the course of industrial progress. (B) question the practicality of democratic ideals. (C) encourage support for individual liberties. (D) highlight the uselessness of social reform.
