Читать книгу The industrial republic: a study of the America of ten years hence онлайн

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This book is an attempt to interpret in the light of evolutionary science the social problem of our present world; to consider American institutions as they exist at this hour—what forces are now at work within them, and what changes they are likely to produce. The subject-matter dealt with is not abstract speculation, but rather the everyday realities of the world we know—our present political parties and public men, our present corporations and captains of industry, our present labour unions and newspapers, colleges and churches. The thing sought is an answer to a concrete and definite question: What will America be ten years from now?

Inasmuch as the people who are most interested in practical affairs are very busy people, I judge it to be a common-sense procedure to set forth my ideas in miniature at the outset; so that one may learn in two or three minutes exactly what my book contains, and judge whether he cares to read it.

It is my belief that the student of a generation from now will look back upon the last two centuries of human history and interpret them as the final stage of a long process whereby man was transformed from a solitary and predatory individual to a social and peaceable member of a single world community. He will see that men, pressed by the struggle for existence, had united themselves into groups under the discipline of laws and conventions; and that the last two centuries represented the period when these laws and conventions, having done their unifying work, and secured the survival of the group, were set aside and replaced by free and voluntary social effort.