322 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
to wait for maturity of body and mind. Child-labor laws are themselves the definite legal expression of a mathematical meas- urement of a social duty.
The trade-union world is stating its minimum standard more and more definitely, and insisting on it with courage and con- stancy, though sometimes also with acts of lawlessness and atro- city which show disregard of community welfare. This mini- mum standard includes such factors as the eight-hour day, the sanitary workplace, protected machinery, the age of beginning apprenticeship, and a minimum rate of wages for each branch of industry. The effect of the successful and general application of this standard upon the incapable and the feeble deserves our atten- tion; but the enforcement of the minimum, being a community interest, should not be left to trade unions, but should be, as far as possible, a matter of law and governmental action.
In the maintenance of this minimum standard we are com- pelled to face the problem of immigration of foreigners whose standard of living is below this minimum. So long as hordes of this class are permitted to come freely to America, to live herded in unfit habitations, and to compete for places with our naturalized citizens who have already won an advance, the case is hopeless for our own people.
Uncritical and traditional requirements of ethics produce an unreasoning sentimentalism which wreaks injury upon the race. The ethical demands of the future will become more exact, more capable of explanation and justification, because they will rest both upon inherited instincts of sympathy and also upon calcula- tions of the consequences of methods on social welfare in our own and coming ages. Many of the moral standards of our times need to be profoundly modified by this process of scientific testing and experimentation.
II.
The general form of our present problem is this : What is the best system and method of promoting the welfare of the Depend- ent Group, considered as a vital part of the entire community? It is chiefly a problem of technique. This technique is a mode of
