that co-operation in England and on the continent has built largely upon the affiliation of local neighborship, and in turn devotes much attention to cultivating such affiliations. These references are made particularly by way of suggesting that if, as many good observers believe, we are to see in this country a new and rapid growth of experiment toward economic co-operation, these communities in which a vital and achieving neighborhood consciousness has already been aroused, will be the most likely soil in which this seed shall germinate and bear fruit. The success of co-operation in England, and its failure thus far here, are commonly laid to the homogeneity of the one people and the lack of it in the other. The achievement of sound neighborhood assimilation among us will surely go far toward bringing such experiments within our range.

One of the most striking aspects of the presence of mental dark spots with regard to the neighborhood as the least common multiple, from the point of view of the home, and the greatest common divisor, from the point of view of the state, is the almost total lack of the compilation and publication of statistical information about it. Considering the vast effort and expense involved in the collection of statistics covering births, mortality, disease, defectiveness, crime, sanitation, housing, industries, occupation, incomes, nationality, etc., it is really a tragic form of negligence that such facts are not everywhere compiled and graphically set forth so as to point the finger of fate at actual conditions from block to block. As the constructive neighborhood sense grows, it will certainly insist that such precise specifications be laid before it, with the result that the collective power of neighborhoods will be greatly stimulated and developed.

Such a disclosure, minute on the one hand, so far as each neighborhood is concerned, but comprehensive and exhaustive for cities and states, will for the first time present the real pattern in which the municipality and the commonwealth, as total fabrics put together out of interlacing neighborhoods, will begin to work out large human projects in their true lights and shades, and in their delicate adjustments of proportion and perspective. It would be hard to overestimate the importance of such results to city planning. Sociology as an art, no less than as a science, must find its primary

essential data in the fully understood neighborhood-building organically from the neighborhood, up to the nation. Aside from political action, this same ascendant synthesis must be worked out in terms of voluntary association even more subtly and exhaustively for purposes of advancing social welfare. Here such federations as were first organized in our cities for purposes of scientific charity, and those which with an ampler and more positive program are forming among the settlement houses of some of our cities are foreshadowing something of the value of the objects, and the interest of the technique, which a properly worked out federation of the neighborhoods of a city would have. The settlement federations, gathering up in an increasing degree the indigenous interests of the tenement-house neighborhoods of the city, proceed to eliminate wasteful competition of effort, to bring different specialties of service up to the best standard reached by any of the houses, to secure experts in different forms of service and send them from neighborhood to neighborhood, to classify local needs that are common to all the neighborhoods and make them the basis of a presentation of ascertained facts to be acted upon by the city government or the state legislature, and to bring out into the broader life of the city the average citizens of the less resourceful local sections.

In one city there is a United Improvement Association with delegates from some eighteen local improvement organizations, including both the downtown and the suburban sections. This organization is gradually coming to have much of the influence of a branch of the city government, with the important qualification that membership in it is by definition restricted to men who have won their right to membership in it by neighborhood social service. The sociological type of federation goes experimentally through the actual hierarchy of the social organism, from the family, through the neighborhood, the larger district, up to the city and the state -it rediscovers what precise functions belong to each in and of itself, what functions the neighborhoods perform for the city through acting by themselves, and what functions they can render for it as for themselves only by broad forms of thoroughly organized team play covering the city or state as a whole.

There are two of our great institutions which, roused by the

results of experiment in neighborhood reorganization, are beginning to awaken to the great national possibilities of a quickened neighborhood spirit, freshened down to date. The public school in some of our states is being developed into a rendezvous for every form of local community interest; and a specialized force is beginning to be organized for the necessary and responsible leadership in such enterprise. The church social service commissions, which have now been organized in not fewer than thirty-five different divisions of the Christian church—though somewhat inclined to issue judgments upon broad economic problems which had better be left to experts in such matters-are coming to realize that the churches possess an inconceivably valuable asset for social reconstruction in that they have in every local community throughout the land a building equipment and a group of people who, as a matter of fact, are already solemnly pledged to work with everyone in the community for the well-being and progress of the community as a whole. The spread of the conception-and it is spreading rapidly -that the local church exists not for itself but for its communitythat the minister must find in his congregation not his field but his force that the best and strongest people in each local congregation must be sent freely out into the open community there to work out vows of service in full co-operation with persons coming from other congregations and with men of good will apart from any church connection-will give a new complexion to many of the most anxious problems of social democracy.

THE RISING NATIONAL INDIVIDUALISM

HERBERT ADOLPHUS MILLER
Olivet College

It is not at all clear just where the individual merges into the social, but we have become familiar with the contrast between Individualism and Socialism, and everyone has a fairly good idea of what is meant by the two terms. We are beginning to see that men are more closely related to the groups to which they belongfamily, community, and religious organization-than to any interest which could be more specifically called merely personal. The object of this paper is to show that there is a rapidly developing individualism that is distinctly social, and which promises to become a powerful factor in human affairs. The earlier conflict between Socialism and Individualism is likely to be diverted to that between Socialism and Nationalism or the struggle for national individuality.

At the present moment the world is organizing itself into two great camps-Socialism and Nationalism. Both are expressions of the group feeling; both are movements of revolt; both are struggles for freedom. They started from a common impulse about fifty years ago, but quickly found themselves arrayed against each other. One would break down political boundaries; the other would build them up. Socialism calls all the world one; Nationalism sets part against the rest. Socialism is economic; Nationalism sentimental. Both are rapidly becoming world-wide and must fundamentally modify statescraft.

Socialism is one of the world-movements accepted as an actuality. It has a program which seeks more or less clearly defined results. But National Individualism looms on the horizon as an equally extensive expression of human association which cannot fail to be a temporary check to the realization of the ideal of the socialist.

It has sprung into being in its present form so rapidly that it has been difficult to recognize it as one of the most potent forms

of social consciousness. It is akin to patriotism as generally understood, but draws its lines according to the group consciousness for a common language, common traditions, or a feeling of the unity of blood through some common ancestor. It does not correspond to present national boundaries, but rather to historic or even imaginary boundaries. At the present time this sentimental Nationalism is fraught with more significance on the continent of Europe than existing political divisions.

In the United States with its hordes of various peoples such as no other country ever knew, an understanding of the national feeling is indispensable before we can hope to assimilate our aliens into Americans.

Just as Socialism has been a revolt against the coercive control of men by wealth or arbitrary government, so this national feeling is the revolt of a people conscious of its unity, against control by a power trying to annihilate this consciousness. The phenomenal development of both Socialism and Nationalism has been in the last decade.

Labor has been oppressed since war first made slaves, and nations have been oppressed since war first made some groups conquerors and others subjects, and until recent times no one thought any other condition possible. The discovery that these conditions are not inherent in the structure of the universe resulted in Socialism for the individual and Nationalism for the group.

The policy of Europe has been the control of various areas and peoples by a few great powers. Of late years this control has been maintained by relatively much less war than formerly. Thus the German Empire was consolidated rather peaceably. Austria has established and maintained its domination over its heterogeneous aggregation of Germans, Poles, Bohemians, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croations, Bosnians, Dalmatians, and Italians. Russia has increased its control over Finland and Poland. Italy has become strong through the union of small kingdoms. But there was never a time when there was so little assimilation as at present. Bavaria and Saxony love Prussia no better than before they became integral parts of the German Empire. It seems inevitable that the time is not far distant when disintegration and realignments will change