SOCIAL SERVICE, the modern study of people and conditions looking toward the bet terment of mankind; a forward movement deal ing with life, occupations and environments, embracing the observation and investigation of the relations between employers and em ployees, co-operation, labor legislation, hours of work, wages, industrial betterment, child labor, factory sanitation and inspection, safety appliances, improvement of civic and municipal conditions, civil service, public ownership, the initiative and referendum, tax reform, mar riage and divorce, housing, temperance, pauper ism and crime, defective and delinquent chil dren, education, social settlements, institutional churches and the like.
Social Revolutions.— During the 19th cen tury there took place the two greatest revolu tions in all history — one in the material world, created by the application of natural forces to industry; the other in the world of ideas, pro duced by the application of the scientific method to all processes of investigation. They have radically changed very many social conditions. Thousands of mechanics have lost their posi tions in recent years they could not readjust themselves to the new methods of in vention. Thousands of business men and manu facturers have been driven into bankruptcy because they could not adapt themselves to the new conditions by more economical methods of production and distribution. Many tens of thousands of men, women and children cl;e needlessly in our cities every year because we have not yet learned how to adapt ourselves to the new conditions of urban life.
The process of readjustment is one of ex periment. Each experiment, whether success ful or otherwise, throws a ray of light on the problem of how to do it or how not to do it. Experience signifies nothing unless we trace the relations of cause and effect. The science of statistics, by which facts are so gathered as to embody truth and so interpreted as to afford knowledge, is of recent origin. It is a singular fact that our young republic was the first government in the world to take a census at stated intervals. Ships of state kept no log
books. It is small wonder that so many split on the same rocks. Important as it is in social and political science to know precisely where we are, it is even more important to know the direction in which we are moving, for tendency is prophetic, and to establish a line of tendency we must fix more than one point; hence the value of a base line. Our decennial census dur ing the 19th century established a base line 100 years long— the first in all history— from which we may measure in the 20th and in each succeeding century. Only in recent years have men learned to gather facts, to sift them and correctly to interpret them, thus creating science. We are only beginning to construct the science of living, which is living in intelli gent obedience to all natural laws; that is, all the laws which God has established both for the individual and for society.
Existing Evils.— There are many great evils incident to our present stage of industrial and social evolution on which no intelligent lover of his country and his kind can look with indifference. The widespread hostility, if not open conflict, between organized capital and organized labor does violence to economic and social laws no less than to Christian principles. The reckless and increasing sacrifice of life and limb in American industry calls for such edu cation of public opinion as will demand and enforce effective legislation touching accidents and their prevention. The victories of peace are even more bloody than those of war. There were not so many victims of the Boer War as there were in American industries during the same period. If to casualties on railroads we could add those in the mining, manufactur ing, building and lumber industries, the totals would show a very considerable industrial army killed and a very large industrial army wounded every year.