THE AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Volume I JANUARY 1896 Number 4
BUSINESS MEN AND SOCIAL THEORISTS.
Representatives of two very respectable classes of the community are apt to find themselves in hostile attitudes in the discussion of contemporary social questions—the scientific student of social phenomena and the "captain of industry." Has the student of sociology a right to discuss the central theme of his field of research? This is the matter in dispute. Professor Laughlin (Mill, Political Economy, p. 523) says: "The laborer, if he would become something more than a receiver of wages, in the ordinary sense, must move himself up in the scale of laborers until he reaches the skill and power also to command manager's wages. . . . . It leads directly to the means by which the lower classes may raise themselves to a higher position —the actual details of which, of course, are difficult, but, as they are not included in political economy, they must be left to sociology—and forms the essential basis of hope for any proper extension of productive coöperation." This definition of the limits of economics and of the duty of sociology, made by a master, we accept; but find ourselves resolutely opposed at the very point where our discussion begins to have a real living human interest. What is urged against our discipline and our method?
It would be strange if the "captain of industry" did not sometimes manifest a militant spirit, for he has risen from the ranks largely because he was a better fighter than most of us.
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