need not be traced further here. Why are there so many misfits in the field of industrial occupation? Because of our system of recruitment. The greater number of our industrial workers leave school so young that they have no real means of choosing their life-work. They are conscripts rather than volunteers. This fundamental evil, responsible, as the life-story of most 'agitators' would reveal, for so much discontent and so many tragedies of unfulfilled promise, cannot be redressed until whole-time education is extended to all up to the age of unfolding capacity-roughly, about sixteen. Equalisation of the social prestige attaching to occupations, together with a real choice of vocation, under conditions permitting of experienced guidance, would go far to diffuse among the modern working population the sense of freedom and happiness with which the Athenians were able to infect even the slaves who laboured on their Acropolis. But there remains the question of 'drudgery-of work so degrading and dehumanising, not from the conditions of its organisation but from its very nature, that it infects the free men who perform it, however well paid, with a sense of servitude and dishonour. That there are such occupations cannot be doubted by those who have adventured nose, eyes, and ears into some of our hives of production; nor can it be asserted of most of them that they can be dispensed with in the life of the community. For such tasks there is but one remedy consistent with the standards of our civilisation and of our democratic constitution. Inherently servile, they cannot be allowed to remain the whole-time occupation of any citizen. They must be scheduled and analysed and then assigned for short periods to conscripts. Industrial conscription, as William James long ago pointed out, is the key, both to the diffusion of a democratic spirit of industrial service and to the problem of 'dirty work.' Bulgaria, unaware perhaps of the high philosophic authority for the policy, has already embarked on the experiment, rendered possible by the abolition of her conscript army, of conscribing her young people, young men and women alike, for labour service. Inexorable logic and practical expediency will drive other nations, sooner or later, along the same road; and it may not be long before the

familiar armchair grumblers at the laziness of miners and navvies will risk being sharply recalled to reality by some younger club member who has known in his own person what it is to hew coals or to break stones. The war, which transformed so many of our values, has helped here too to blaze for us a new trail.

6

One final objection must be met. 'All this,' we shall be told, may be very well; but, so long as existing inequalities of wealth persist, custom and riches, acting in alliance, will prove too strong for you. In the modern world, ideas are but wind; it is Wealth that is Power. Thus, evade it as you say, you will be brought up, in the last analysis, against those barons of the purse whom you appear to desire rather to convert than to dethrone.' It is true that Wealth is Power, and that the existing inequalities of capital and of income in the industrial countries are infinitely exacerbating to social relations. Lands like Switzerland and Norway where, until recently, such glaring contrasts were unknown, have had a happier and more truly democratic history. But to recognise, and to seek to remedy, the inequalities of wealth in the community is one thing; to make it the heart and centre of a general scheme of industrial reform is another. Inequalities of wealth constitute, not an industrial but a political problem, a problem of taxation. There are many kinds of rich men; some have worked for their riches; others have made them by speculation; others have had their riches thrust upon them by the fortune of inheritance or even of marriage. To concentrate attention upon the 'profiteer,' who is generally identified with the successful entrepreneur, is to narrow and to distort the problem. The successful entrepreneur may be overpaid, in comparison with the poet and the preacher, the professor and the public servant, for the particular combination of insight, rapid decision and organising ability which enables him to 'steer a waggon of coal into the factory'; but at least, as we should never fail to remind him, he is rendering a public service. If his remuneration tends to be, and to remain even under a changed system of social values, unusually high, let him pay his due, like all other possessors of wealth, in an all-round system of taxation. After all, the real root of social inequality is to be found, not in earned

wealth, however imposing may be the fortune of this or that parvenu millionaire, but in inherited wealth; and the real road to social equality is through a drastic system of inheritance taxes or Death Duties.

This, however, is a suggestion which must not be further developed here; and in any case it carries us back to the dominating problem of the transformation of motive; for, if it be really true in England, as it certainly is not in the United States, that the creative artists who find an outlet for their genius in supplying their fellow-citizens with the goods and services of civilisation, from railways and motor-cars to the newspaper on the breakfast-table, do so, not for the joy of skilled achievement but in order to leave enough to their children to tempt them to idleness, then there may still be danger in pressing forward practical policies too far in advance of the motives indispensable to their success. One thing, however, is clear, that, unless this transformation of motive is effected, and effected rapidly, in Britain among the employing and managing classes, and rendered possible by social legislation and by changed conditions among the manual workers, and unless the philosophy which regards work as drudgery and leisure as the true life is refuted not merely in word but in deed, British trade and industry will emerge diminished and dishonoured from the crisis of the post-war generation; and the privilege of supremacy in this particular form of service to mankind, so congenial to our character and traditions, will pass to others more ready to read the signs of the times and more eager to respond to them.

A. E. ZIMMERN.

24

Art. 5.-THE ADAMS FAMILY.

1. Chapters of Erie and Other Essays. By Charles Francis Adams, Jr, and Henry Adams. Boston: Osgood, 1871.

2. Studies Military and Diplomatic. By Charles Francis Adams, Jr. New York: Macmillan, 1911.

3. Charles Francis Adams. An Autobiography. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1916.

4. The Education of Henry Adams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.

5. Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. By Henry Adams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.

6. A Cycle of Adams Letters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920.

And other works.

THE Adams family belongs specifically to Massachusetts, but its reputation is national. It stands as the one example of transmitted qualities employed for four generations in public service. For nearly two centuries the family has remained in the public eye, and has held its prominence in the many changes from a state of colonial dependence to that of a democracy composed of many peoples, in which the very variety of tradition and experience defies united thought or action. To explain the later Adamses, a glance must be given to the earlier generations.

John Adams, of colonial days, stood second in a group of lawyers who left a reputation for learning in the law. Something more than a lawyer, he studied the art of government, pursuing his investigations into the history of ancient republics, and of the Italian cities, nearer in time and more fruitful in example. He was so advanced an advocate of rebellion from the mother-country that he became for a time an object of suspicion to his colleagues, yet circumstances proved his prescience. They sent him to Europe on diplomatic service, where he dealt with questions of finance with success and an ability as marked as that he showed in the joint task of obtaining a peace that recognised the independence of the States. The first continental' Minister to St James's, he faced exacting duties, and met the many

32

difficulties arising from political prudence and financial cupidity with discretion and good results. The States were united only in their foreign relations; at home their alarming weakness and jealousies threatened disaster. To independence from Great Britain must be added union among themselves. To that John Adams made no direct contribution. The constitution of Massachusetts was chiefly of his drafting, but his essays on the American constitutions were interpreted in a hostile spirit, as though they favoured aristocracy. He returned to America to become Vice-President and President. After four years of service, the Opposition or Jefferson republicanism won, and Adams retired to Quincy to pass twenty-five years in retirement. His pen had been active in every position he had occupied, and it was not a discreet pen. His reputation rests upon his high character; incorruptible, fearless, and combative, he never had a following in political life.

The son, John Quincy Adams, passed through a training as severe as that of John Stuart Mill, and seemed from the beginning to be destined to a public career. In close imitation of his father, he was in succession Minister to Holland, Germany, and Russia, a negotiator at Ghent, the first American Minister at St James's after the peace of 1814, Secretary of State, and President a training enjoyed by none of his contemporaries. His presidency came at a time when the leading problems entailed by Independence had been settled. His one great suggestion of public policy—that the natural resources of the country should be held and developed as a national fund to meet the expenses of government—was rejected by the people, intent upon individual control. Like his father, Adams was denied a second term. In place of retiring to rust in unemployment, he represented Massachusetts in the national House of Representatives, and for seventeen years fought the cause of freedom against the South, winning a greater reputation than he had gained in all his previous service. As Secretary of State he formulated the Monroe doctrine,' proposed the abolition of privateering, planned a series of treaties to abolish war, and welcomed the dawn of independence of Spanish South America. Truly a man of broad vision.