Social Life -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sections (TOC) : ---------------------------------- * 1 47 Words; 279 Characters * 2 193 Words; 1,179 Characters * 3 85 Words; 523 Characters * 4 48 Words; 291 Characters * 5 27 Words; 166 Characters * 6 181 Words; 1,003 Characters * 7 173 Words; 971 Characters Sections (Content) : ---------------------------------- * 1 [says a critic of the English law] A factory act is not something "given away," like coals or blankets at Christmas time. It represents, rightly understood, the reasoned effort of the best sense of the community to raise its industrial and social life to a higher plane. * 2 The smoky factory chimney is a favorite example simply because it appears to limit itself so conveniently to spreading dirt within a locality; the additional costs of keeping one's person and one's clothes clean in the polluted areas can easily be estimated and added to the private costs in order to yield an estimate of the social costs of production. The costs of water pollution by one or more factories is also amenable to calculation of this sort since the authorities usually have estimates of the damages being caused and of the higher costs of alternative sources of pure water. Some of the simpler nuisances, on the other hand, such as excessive engine noise and emission of noxious fumes, may be tackled most economically by enacting compulsory noise-muffling measures and compulsory installation of anti-fume devices, as in several states of the US. However, more general social afflictions such as industrial noise, dirt, stench, ugliness, urban sprawl, and other features that jar the nerves and impair the health of many are difficult both to measure and to impute to any single source -- which is, of course, no reason for treating them with resignation. * 3 ...since the traffic problem is to be found largely within the cities, towns and suburbs, and the problem is, therefore, one of social welfare in general, the transport economist, as it happens, is not the man to consult. For the transport economist addresses himself in the main to the mutual frustration experienced by the increasing traffic; that is, only to those external diseconomies that additional traffic impose on existing traffic, and not with costs imposed by traffic as a whole on the rest of society. * 4 ...the consumption of a manufacturer worth a million, under whose orders are employed a thousand workmen, reduced to the bare necessaries of life, is not so advantageous for the nation, as that of a hundred manufacturers far less rich, who employ each but ten workmen far less poor. * 5 ...I am of opinion, that any system of economy which necessarily tends to corrupt the manners of a people, ought by every possible means to be discouraged... * 6 It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living; how to make getting a living not merely holiest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not. One would think, from looking at literature, that this question had never disturbed a solitary individual's musings. Is it that men are too much disgusted with their experience to speak of it? The lesson of value which money teaches, which the Author of the Universe has taken so much pains to teach us, we are inclined to skip altogether. As for the means of living, it is wonderful how indifferent men of all classes are about it, even reformers, so called -- whether they inherit, or earn, or steal it. I think that Society has done nothing for us in this respect, or at least has undone what she has done. Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off. * 7 A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of nuts and raisins, and makes slaves of its sailors for this purpose! I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper berries, and bitter almonds were strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and activity- the activity of flies about a molasses- hogshead. Very well, observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were mosquitoes. Events : ---------------------------------- Social Life -- Added : April 11, 2020 About This Textfile : ---------------------------------- Text file generated from : http://RevoltSource.com/