prehensively and fundamentally human state, the interests of whose rulers would not depend on the frustration of the lives of other people, and which would live upon its ability to bring about a larger and better measure of human fulfillment. Surely if the war has taught us anything it has taught us that the only measure of a man or woman's civic value is his or her ability to do competent and disinterested work on behalf of the national purpose.

This workers' commonwealth cannot be brought into existence without enacting what is superficially called class legislation, that is without legislating

to a national establishment and another which seeks to associate it with loyalty to a constructive national purpose. This newer conservatism will be more liberal than its predecessor, but its effort will be nevertheless to patch up a class system by ameliorating its worst grievances and by then bribing, beguiling or coercing the disfranchised class into acquiescence. It will undertake a more difficult job than its adversary. It can scarcely hold its own against a party which seeks to forge a national bond out of a work of scientific social reconstruction unless it is favored by a continuation of the

tach power, prestige and cultural opportunities chiefly to the possessors of property. But legislation of this kind is national in its effect. It seeks to remove the obstacles to national moral unity, and unless these obstacles are removed the national unity will be destroyed in other countries, as it has been temporarily in Russia, by an irreconcilable class conflict. The British Labor party is national, not only because it is not exclusive but because it is essentially reconstructive. It is dedicated not to the preservation or amelioration of an existing system of class power and privilege, but to the substitution for it of an essentially changing and progressive system. Its object is to employ scientific method in order to infuse social purpose into those changes in the balance of social forces which are always taking place, and which have accumulated with great rapidity since 1914. It frankly bases its chance of success on its ability to work out a scientificially definite technique of social reconstruction. By expressly associating the promotion of national unity with the ideal of social reconstruction it makes the national bond depend, not on the preservation of existing institutions, but on the progressivé realization of their underlying social purposes. Nationalism becomes an essentially dynamic principle and the Labor party would be national not merely because it was essentially progressive but because it was experimental, and educational in its method of realizing its progressivism.

The enterprise of the British Labor party is that of securing the support of a solid majority of the British electorate to a programme of social reconstruction, and to use that majority for the purpose of giving to the programme legislative and administrative effect. In so far as it succeeds it will split the Liberal party and force the older Liberals to eschew half measures and to commit themselves either to a thorough-going radicalism or to a new conservatism. For the Conservative party will remain, and much will depend on the way it is led. It may well be that British politics for a generation will turn chiefly on a fight between one party which seeks to associate national unity with loyalty

security. For national unity is necessarily the child of intelligent social readjustment. It cannot be promoted in any other way, except in so far as a nation is threatened with aggression from without or with insurrection from within. If the British Labor Party is to succeed it will be obliged to secure its continuity against the danger of foreign aggression and revolutionary violence.

Higher Taxes on Wealth W

HILE we are revising our scheme of war taxation, say the established authorities on public finance, we ought to go much farther in the direction of universality. We ought to lower the income tax exemption in order to reach more of the labor incomes that have been increased by the war. We ought to extend our system of excise taxation in order to make even those who must remain exempt from direct taxes pay a share in the costs of the war. The values we are seeking to establish by this war are democratic values. When we have won it the world may or may not be a better place for the aristocrat, the plutocrat, but it will certainly be a better place for the man of modest hopes and undistinguished fortunes. Therefore he ought to be willing and eager to contribute to its costs in proportion to his ability.

To this reasoning any democrat can assent. But before he seeks to apply it in the field of practical policy he will want to be assured that the conditions upon which the principle of universality is based are actually present in our national system. If we could assume that income was distributed in proportions that satisfy ever so roughly the requirements of justice or of social economic expediency we should be compelled to accept the conclusion that no tax ought to be levied upon the great income without an appropriate tax upon the small. Or, waiving the problem of justice in normal distribution, if we could say that in spite of the revolutionary character of the economic influences operating in war time, the relative position of the classes remained the same, the argu

ment for universality would be at least plausible. But we cannot say this. We know, as a fact, that in the period from 1914 to 1916 there was a powerful tendency operating to make the rich richer and more numerous. The report on Statistics of Income, compiled under the direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, offers an opportunity for measuring this tendency.

What the figures for income exhibit is an increase in the number of taxable incomes that becomes more marked the higher the income class. Incomes ranging between $3,000 and $4,000 increased in number less than 3 per cent; incomes between $15,000 and $20,000 increased almost 50 per cent; incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 increased over 100 per cent; incomes of $150,000 to $200,000, 216 per cent; incomes of $1,000,000 and over, 243 per cent. The greater the income, the more rapidly it multiplied: such is the obvious inference from the returns. Or, in other terms, the surplus income of America was becoming concentrated, from 1914 to 1916, in fewer and fewer hands.

But must we not make allowance for the fact that in the period from 1914 to 1916 there was a great advance in prices, so that there is an element of inflation in the incomes of 1916? It is quite true that in 1916 a million dollar income would not have purchased so great a bulk of consumable commodities as in 1914. But the same thing is true of the income of $3,000 to $4,000. If we reduced all incomes to terms of 1914 commodity purchasing power, we should reduce the percentage increase in the larger incomes, but we should produce a great decrease in the smaller ones. The proportions would remain unchanged. Our conclusion as to the fact of concentration of surplus income remains valid.

Indeed, we have reason for laying a heavier emphasis upon the tendency to concentration if we reduce incomes to purchasing power. Most of an income of $3,000 is expended on commodities the price of which advanced from 1914 to 1916. Most of an income of $1,000,000 is expended in the purchase of stocks and bonds, lands and mines and factories, the prices of which declined, as a rule, except in case of war industries and war stocks which exhibited a great increase in earning power. The general economic forces operating in the period 1914 to 1916 therefore not only made the large incomes more numerous, but also made of such incomes a more potent instrument for acquiring control of the permanent productive resources of the United States.

Since we entered the war, however, may we not have overcome this tendency to concentration? We have no figures as to the distribution of per

sonal incomes in 1917 and no basis for precise forecasts for 1918. But we do know that dividends, which form more than one-third of all incomes over $40,000, and business profits, which form approximately another third, were more generous in 1917 than in 1916, and present indications point to a persistence of their prosperity through 1918. Accordingly it appears a safe forecast that the income statistics for 1917 and 1918 will show that the relative increase in the larger incomes has again been decidedly greater than in the smaller. The tendencies toward concentration set in motion before we entered the war have not yet been checked. More and more of our income and our productive power is falling into the hands of the few.

This, we submit, is not a condition upon which a democrat can enthusiastically espouse projects of indirect taxes of wide incidence. Nor can he endorse without qualifications plans for raising the normal tax, which would burden all taxable incomes in equal measure, while the supertax on large incomes remained unchanged. Rather let us first of all devise a scheme of supertaxes calculated to prevent the larger incomes from gaining in number more rapidly than the more moderate. It will then be time to consider rates of normal tax to be levied

upon all incomes alike. And as a final stage in the development of our taxation system, we may properly consider consumption taxes of wide incidence, designed to collect a revenue from the in

comes too modest to fall under the direct income tax.

"B

Y the way, boys," said a Y. M. C. A. director at the end of Saturday night's minstrel show at a base port, "tomorrow's Sunday. Those who are interested will be welcome to a service at 10 o'clock."

If opportunities for religious observance were always announced as frankly as this, all Y. M. C. A. huts might be as firmly established in the affections of the A. E. F. as the one in question. They are not-by any means and one significant reason why is that "religion" is frequently concealed in a Y. M. C. A. show, like a pill in strawberry jam. In such huts in England, it is not at all unusual to insert a prayer in the middle of a variety performance or a moving picture show. I have never seen that game "worked "-to speak as the A. E. F. speaks-in France. But I have seen audiences break, or sneak, for the door in an effort to avoid a prayer tacked on to the end of an evening of fun. The bulk of the crowd is, of course, too polite or too slow to escape, but no more reconciled on that account. For every two men who come up and thank the secretary afterwards he always cites these two when asked why he uses such methods there are two hundred who are cursing openly or inwardly. The result is a slump in morale that vitiates the whole purpose of the entertainment; natural high spirits are quenched, religion is cheapened, and the Y. M. C. A. rendered supremely unpopular.

When one analyzes the hostile attitude of many men in our army to this organization which is doing so stupendously much for the army's comfort and happiness, one finds suspicion of an evangelical joker" mixed up even with the criticism of the post-exchange service discussed in an earlier article. A sanctimonious secretary who will hide a sermon in a variety show will also short-change you-this seems to be the soldier's reasoning. The conclusion is quite unjustified; but the canteen service has needed the reorganization that is actually in procHenceforth, according to the present plans, the Y. M. C. A. canteens will carry nothing that the Quartermaster's sales stores also handle. As the Quartermaster pays no transportation charges his price for Bull Durham, for instance, has heretofore been less than the Y. M. C. A.'s, with the result that the latter has been accused of profiteering; now the Y. M. C. A. will stop importing Bull Durham altogether. Moreover, it will probably sell such brands of tobacco and chocolate as it does import at a loss. The organization has wisely decided that it can afford to sink two or three million

dollars a year in its canteen supplies if it contributes thereby to the morale of the army.

The second criticism of the Y. M. C. A. noted in a former article-criticism of the calibre of the male personnel is more closely connected with the religious question. Although the valiant efforts of Y. M. C. A. leaders in France to get men who are above all first rate human beings are noticeably bearing fruit; although the quality of the secretaries is improving steadily, the fact remains that boats are still arriving in French ports bearing Y. M. C. A. personnel who believe that their mission in the A. E. F. is to save souls by evangelical means, or "to prepare them for the coming of the Lord."

This is the case because the recruiting of personnel in America still starts, as in the ante-bellum days, from an evangelical bias. The head of the Y. M. C. A. Personnel Bureau in New York declared himself as follows in a letter of instructions sent out a few months ago: "Only a very limited number of non-evangelicals should be used."

Again, in the same letter: "In all the fundamental essentials of Christianity the men must be fully and firmly established." What the "fundamental essentials " are in the minds of the American leaders may be gathered from the blank that every applicant fills out and the "confidential reference" sent by the Personnel Board to three or four people whose names he furnishes. In the former he is asked (Question No. 29): "Do you attend church regularly?" In the latter the person given as reference is asked to estimate the candidate as regards these three points, among others: Proven Christian character. Success in religious interviews.

What information can you give regarding re

ligious life?

The replies to be graded under "Exceptional," "Good," "Average" or "Poor." Moreover, it is no unusual thing indeed it is customary-for Personnel Boards of the Y. M. C. A. to ask applicants whether they are able to conduct religious services.

A question about the use of tobacco and cigarettes, which appeared on an earlier blank, has been dropped, as well as the famous question, often cited by enemies of the Y. M. C. A.: “What success have you had in bringing men to Christ?" But certain leaders in the organization, especially in small towns and cities, where good material to work with the A. E. F. could otherwise be obtained, behave as if they were still in force. It is

certain that the Y. M. C. A. secretaries who are used to recruiting sergeants in these smaller places often discriminate against excellent candidates because they smoke and have no particular religious affiliations; accepting instead smug pietists under whose unctuous touch our solid soldiers of the A. E. F. cringe as they do not from machine gun fire. Moreover, when Unitarians, Universalists, Christian Scientists, Roman Catholics and Free Thinkers are accepted and some of them are being sent to France-they do not come as secretaries, but as associate secretaries. The use of the word " asso

ciate" theoretically bars them from executive control and gives them no standing except as workers. Practically speaking, the distinction is not valid in France, where liberal ideas prevail; but how can men of the best type not feel doubts about joining an organization which thus marks off the sheep from the goats?

Eight Y. M. C. A. men attached to the American troops in the front line have been recently cited for bravery and all the secretaries with these troops, ministers included, appear to be a part of the army in spirit, heart and effort. Like the army they seem to have said: "To hell with everything -including our old evangelical convictions which does not conduce to efficient fighting"; and the army is deeply appreciative of their fine spirit of service. They are not only getting caught in barrage fire and living in dug-outs like the men, with out taking their shoes or clothes off for a month in order to provide hot drinks and writing paper, they are even following the men over the top as stretcher bearers, they are even caring for wounded and burying dead-doing all sorts of painful jobs that seem more rightly to belong to the Red Cross. The front line work of the Red Cross is negligible as yet in quantity as compared with that of the Y. M. C. A. Along the railway lines the Red Cross canteen service-excellent so far as it goes-is entirely inadequate to the needs of the present hour, yet

A. E. F. acquires to some degree the religion of humanity in the end, his new religion often comes slowly. That is hard on the men of the A. E. F. first of all; and, second, hard on the fine band of liberal, devoted men who direct the Y. M. C. A. in France. Face to face with the sternest sort of circumstance these pioneers are straining every nerve to make the Y. M. C. A. an instrument of wide public service. They realize that no voluntary organization has ever had such an opportunity before, and they must frequently in their heart of hearts-though far too loyal for the sort of criticism in which a disinterested journalist who believes strongly both in the Y. M. C. A. and the army must sometimes indulge-admit that it can never be more than half fulfilled with the type of personnel that is still being sent over from America. The tools with which the Board in France is asked to work are often imperfect for its big ends-that is the plain truth. The A. E. F. can no more be herded into an evangelical pen than the whole American nation can be so herded. It is the whole American nation-intensely human, idealistic, vital, young, bent on converting the world to a democracy that laughs at the narrow evangelistic categories of the past. When it wants religion of the traditional sort it wants it straight, not camouflaged as vaudeville. When it does not want religion at all, it nevertheless wants the stove, and the rag-time, and the movies, and the writing-paper and the human friendliness of the Y. M. C. A. hut. It should not be obliged to pay for them with hypocrisy and mistrust. The Y. M. C. A. in America, if it would help the army in its task, should send men abroad who have a vision and a humanity as big as the miles that stretch from the Pacific Ocean to the front northwest of Toul.

ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT.

Paris, July 5th.

M

ANY people hate social science long before they know what it means. Perhaps the terms scowl at one another. Perhaps one man resents the idea of our taking the infinite sea of human living that makes the ebb and flow of society and handling it scientifically, as if it were a metallic compound or some bacillus. Another will not smirch the fair name of science with such pretense of exactitude in the midst of fuddling and confusion. Matthew Arnold's suave urbanities against the arrogance of the scientific spirit still serve many persons for bulwarks in the humanistic defense. But the vexed and polished guard of humanism and the terse protectors of natural science might both be told that the social sciences are but the matter of the one with the method of the other. It is too bad that Matthew Arnold could not have foreseen for his consolation the rise of the humanistic sciences which should offset the power of the adversary.

But many people, when they learn what social science really is, have little enough liking for it. They ask with a show of scornful serenity what it is all about, this explaining and arranging into systems of the whole of society by a man who knows little of the world and nothing whatever about art, and is personally familiar only with the religion of the simpler class of people; a man of facts without imagination, and persistence without light. His reasoning, too, sounds convincing; though they know from Molière he knows nothing from Molière that reasoning is often fatal to reason. What he says is plainly true; but-now we have it-it is not all the truth. That is how it stands, but it seems impossible to state for him the rest of the truth. They know how much of life is nuance, shading, a savor that emerges in taste and choice but at its best is indefinable. They must descend to meet him then. But at last on his terms their kind of truth still escapes. He is an irritating fellow, and he seems very young.

The social scientist makes as bad a muddle of it. This humanistic culture of theirs, what has it done for them, he asks; has it promoted unselfishness, municipal organization, or public welfare? Has it prevented the application of scientific discoveries to industrial monopoly? Has it clarified for them their own motives or complex? Or, harking back to their classics, why do some of the defenders of those antique benefits of clearness and precision write of them so vaguely or so turgidly? Why so limp and tame, thou admirer of Achilles in Homer? His neighbors seem very old.

Nevertheless the heavier responsibility for the settlement lies with the social scientist. This follows because society is his final profession; and, however much he might enjoy doing so, he cannot put his humanistic neighbors out of it. Their culture lies within his social science. Their complaints of him hold good so long as they are true of him and his limitations. His complaints of them have no ground except in so far as he insists on carrying all knowledge or culture into life itself and into social application; at which juncture they come under his subject. The leaders in social science know all this. They know that there is not any argument of culture versus social science. The background and the critical and creative minds that make them leaders, make them see this. But the case of social science cries to them for statement.

The lesser workers in the subject need the light of these wider concepts of their subject matter. Laymen need pointers on the science itself, and on the specialists who seem to them forever descending on society like locust plagues on a field of growing wheat. Social science must manage a synthesis that will hold fast in it the quality of humanism, which is a citizenship in the world of the human spirit.

First of all the man behind the idea makes all the difference. We often flatter ourselves by assuming that ideas fail because of their newness or altruism or profundity. But we must remember how a truth takes on the color of the eyes that see it; and how hard it is when we come to turning the idea into a cause to relate oneself properly to it. Causes fail time and again because of their agents; they fail through antagonisms and shortcomings in tact and taste and judgment. People will listen to almost anything so long as the advocate does not get himself disturbingly between them and the subject. And he on his part relates himself effectively to his subject either by a good breeding of the mind or an evangelical fire of the spirit. Men are often on the defensive because they know from experience how many breaks there are in the pure science of these ideas and causes that are presented to them. They know how many men are sociological nowadays who would have been a hundred years ago romantically melancholic. They know the imitation or the craft that turns the man who would have been a bigot under a pious king into an atheist under a sceptic. They know the itch of some temperaments for mere martyrdom, and the craving of others for mere newness. They know how causes suffer from the sort of young men, with mouths eternally full of doctrines and pass-words and the great names among their acquaintance, who use all things as ladders for their own ambition. And they have learned sadly that the prophets themselves are sometimes pushing doctrinaires, or poseurs in a certain genre, or closet egoists. Since, then, the ideas and the causes of

social science like all others must have men to serve

thern, the quality of the agent is a part of the problem. His relation to his matter is an exercise in culture. Which does not imply cutting down the personal, but adapting it; the office of culture is to perfect the personal in larger terms.

And what is the good of a man's professionalizing the mere quality of his ideas? Or of making everything a fighting matter, as if nobody but himself would grant the truth of it. Or why the habit of asking a man, "What is he like? Is he radical?"-as if he must profess one thing or another? He may be radical through studious labor; or be so without labor for the fruits of a vivid point of

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