stands by the gas works; the hospital and playground near the
railroad switch yards. The fact that these major social-service

machines upon which the well-being of the community depends
are not planned but grow up in a confused mass, crowding, partly

crushing and destroying each other, has retarded the recognition of the social order with its major social institutions.

But the study of these organized ways of promoting human wellbeing is progressing. Each of these institutions is becoming the field of a special social science, such as political science, public hygiene, economics, sociology, aesthetics, etc. The history of the growth of each of these major social organizations is being written. We have now the history of the educational systems, the industrial systems, the governmental systems, family life and social intercourse, the arts-both the liberal and the fine arts-and possibly the history of organized recreation and public hygiene and communication.

These institutions are studied with regard to their structure. Elaborate statistical data are being gathered concerning the equipments of these institutions. We count the school buildings, even enumerate the details of their equipment; we take a census of the banks, miles of railroads, factories, art galleries, playgrounds, etc. The organizations of the forces of workers who use these tools are described as a part of the work of the social scientist.

Their processes are also described by the social scientist. This is a more difficult task. Describe a watch or a school system standing still, enumerate its parts and describe their relation, and its structure is being presented. Set the watch or the school system going, then describe how it works, and the process is being presented.

What the several functions of these eight institutions are is still a matter of heated debate. This is particularly true of the governmental system, the educational system, and the social system, i.e., the family and other forms of social intercourse. It is probably too late to try to avoid confusion in the use of the term social, in both a wider and a narrower meaning, by substituting the term societal for the wider meaning and restricting the term social to the narrower meaning. Just what the specific work of each of these institutions is among the whole group of social institutions is not quite clear. The industrial system, of course, has as its function the producing, marketing, and delivering the physical goods that serve the needs of the people of the community and also the physical equipment

of buildings and tools needed in the school system, the recreational system, the governmental system, the hygienal system, etc. The function of the system of public hygiene, composed of the altogether too loosely organized system of hospitals, doctors, sanitary boards, etc., is to safeguard and promote the health of the people of the community. The function of the recreational system is to afford and promote wholesome recreation for the community.

The function of the educational system-and now we enter upon much-disputed ground-is to fit the members of society to take efficiently some part in the forms of social team work in the eight institutions of society and thus earn a living, i.e., gain a right to a share of the benefits of these institutions. It also should fit the members of society to participate in the control of the social order by acquainting them with the social values, ideas, and ideals which serve society in directing its social machinery; namely, social welfare, social justice, social democracy, and social efficiency. This part of its function-its civic function-the school system dodges. Courses in ethics are given, but no catalogue of any university in the United States advertises a course in democracy. It has the further function of fitting the members of society to realize more benefits from the fruits of the organized endeavor in the social order by cultivating their tastes. They thus gain more enjoyment from its products the amusements, artistic creations, recreation, social intercourse, etc. This is the cultural phase of the function of an educational system as a part of a social order.

The function of the system of social intercourse, i.e., the family and other forms of social intercourse, such as that between friends and acquaintances, in clubs, in associations, etc., is to enable us to gratify the desire for love, affection, and sympathy and to secure enjoyment of the finer qualities of human nature. It has the further function of increasing, even doubling, the enjoyment of the fruits of the institutions of the social order. The enjoyment of pictures, drama, music, conversation, outings, recreation, etc., is greatly enhanced by the company of enthusiastic friends. It is team work in the bearing of our sorrows and the enjoyment of our pleasures and affections. It diminishes the one and magnifies and enriches the other.

The purpose of the governmental organization in this system of institutions is to act as the machinery through which the whole system of social-service institutions is supervised. This supervision is to be carried out according to the social values and ideas of the community-ideas upon welfare, ethics, democracy, and efficiency. It is sometimes urged that it is the function of the governmental system to protect the individual. I can find no instance of it. It is the social order with its forms of organized endeavor that is protected by the government against violence and disruption. The individual who does not conform to the various forms of organized activity in the several institutions over which the government watches will feel the coercion of the government, not its protection. The government of a society is set up, not to be in opposition to the very social-service machines which society builds up to serve its well-being, but to preserve their orderly growth and safeguard them against those unsocialized persons who tend by their acts to harm these institutions. When a government does set itself against the improvement of these institutions and the rendering of efficient service by them in an effort to protect the interests of special classes and individuals, it may be displaced by one that will carry out its proper rôle in the social order.

The social sciences are apparently too young to undertake to set up standards and rate the efficiencies of the institutions of the social order; to rate, for instance, the industrial system as 40 per cent efficient, the hygienal system as 10 per cent, the recreational system as 5 per cent, the governmental system as 90 per cent, etc. Many data have been collected which would be of service in making such efficiency ratings. For example, we have many statistical data upon poverty, excessive hours of work, industrial accidents, child labor, illiteracy, divorce, crime, etc. All these data indicate the shortcomings of one or another of these institutions in fulfilling its standard services to the community.

Another interesting phase of study in the social sciences is the cataloguing of the reform movements of all sorts and varieties and noting just which social institution or institutions the reform is conceived to improve. My students have compiled interesting lists of these reform movements. The probability of the effective

ness of the proposed reform is also an interesting field of study and speculation.

The social scientists now realize that they have a field of study apart from that of physics and chemistry and Hegelian philosophy which requires methods of study very different from those employed in such fields. They now more clearly realize that they are studying the efficiencies, structures, processes, functions, and improvements of the several kinds of organized endeavor humanly devised into the social order for the purpose of effectually serving human community needs. There is a world of difference between the study of functionless activity and functionful activity, the study of natural processes and social processes. The one is a study of what happens; the other is a study of the group uses of this information in the service of human needs. A fire department, to use, for example, a minor form of organized activity, is an organization of human beings working with a physical equipment for the purpose of putting out fires. We can write the history of its growth, describe its structure, enumerate its equipment and personnel, describe its processes, and set up a standard or standards of service which it is to attain. We can collect data on the costs of the service and the extent of damage done by fires and thus rate its efficiency. The social scientist, also, as a constructive student of these humanly devised organizations working with physical plants for human purposes, may point out inadequacies in physical equipment and conceive and suggest methods of organizing the working forces in these institutions which would increase their efficiency.

This cursory view of the social order with its systems of socialservice machines and conventions of regulating ideas and values may serve to focus attention upon the social machinery the supervision of which we propose to study.

ETHICS

The social machines which society has gradually built up are not automatic, self-running, self-directing social devices. They must be guided and supervised by society. Society is only partly conscious of its power over this social machinery, of its actual power