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PREFACE IN THE
following pages are discussed some of the principal elements in the
present discontents in Scotland, subjects which deeply concern the lives
of the citizens (and especially the poorest) and the future of the
Scottish people.
Some of the basic elements of the discontents cannot be mistaken; on the
one hand, enormous aggregation of wealth, great beyond the dreams of
avarice, magnified beyond all precedent, are gathered into the hands of
a few people (two wills proved in London in November reached a total of
nineteen million pounds); on the other, the enormous depressive and
destructive influence of much of industrial toil in the greatest cities
— joint features of the huge industrial development; and, in the second
place, the great extension throughout the very poorest classes in the
land, by means of compulsory free education and otherwise, a cheap
press, the instruction provided gratuitously in the multitudes of Sunday
schools and the thousands of Christian and social agencies, of new
desires and aspirations, and the spread of the ideals of social
justice—and particularly those associated with Christianity and the
Sermon on the Mount; opening the minds of the citizens who were born
even in the depths of the city slums to visions of better things,
teaching them the Christian ideas of the essential equality of men and
the perfect justice which every person ought to do to his neighbour;
their secular education inspiring in them, too, wants and desires which
can only be satisfied by some measure of a refined and cultured life,
obtainable only, in so many cases, by a larger endowment of economic
resources than the individuals at present possess; so that, though the
average levels of wages and earnings have risen (as they undoubtedly
have) the average of legitimate wants and implanted desires have
increased (and almost necessarily increased) in greater proportion.
These are the central features at the heart of the social discontents
to-day; and it is no recrudesence of ancient grumblings, no sighing over
“Old unhappy far-off things, and
battles long ago,”
but a position of what is almost a
lack of social equilibrium which the present conditions of life do much
to create and very much less to satisfy; so that the evidence points to
a time of greater toil and trouble, of increasing social bitterness and
industrial strife, unless there is sympathetic understanding of the
newer conditions, and a continuous series of adjustments to satisfy what
is legitimate in them. There is need of some measure of humanity as well
as of sterner justice in dealing with them; for, sometimes, from the
smallest beginnings the most bitter consequences ensue, and when once
the souls of men are aflame (however trivial the inciting cause may seem
to be) the most ordered rules of a collected philosophy or an even
commonsense may be reduced to ashes. The people of to-day are more
insistent on achieving changes than ever their ancestors were, and they
are sometimes impatient — not without reason, perhaps.
In these circumstances, with the masses of the people subject to the
influence of new forces and increased desires, with keener perceptions
of the wants and decencies of civilised life, it is useful to go to the
sources of some of the discontents, to the daily lives of the people,
and to seek to discover, however imperfectly, what are some of the
things of benefit which are specially desirable to realise, and what
things, also, are hindrances and restraints, restrictions and wrongs,
which ought in justice to be removed.
In the following chapters, within reasonable compass, there is a
consideration of some of the leading elements in the social questions of
to-day; and, though it is necessarily far from exhaustive (for the field
surveyed is wide, and multitudinous volumes of detail and endless stacks
of statistics would not exhaust it), it may indicate some of the larger
forces and the greater tendencies which are in operation to-day.
Politics have been avoided purposely, and the advocacy of special
causes; for it is the effort of the present volume to work upon the
solid substratum of agreement which is common to the majority of
persons, irrespective of politics and parties, who take a keen and
intelligent interest in the social affairs of Scotland.
W. S. November, 1910.
Social Questions in Scotland
By William Sutherland (1910) (pdf) |
