, be eliminated altogether.
Both of these lines of discussion certainly indicate that domestic
service is yielding to the influence of a democratic movement, and is
emerging from the narrower code of family ethics into the larger code
governing social relations. It still remains to express the ethical
advance through changed economic conditions by which the actual needs of
the family may be supplied not only more effectively but more in line
with associated effort. To fail to apprehend the tendency of one's age,
and to fail to adapt the conditions of an industry to it, is to leave
that industry ill-adjusted and belated on the economic side, and out of
line ethically.

CHAPTER V

INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION

There is no doubt that the great difficulty we experience in reducing to
action our imperfect code of social ethics arises from the fact that we
have not yet learned to act together, and find it far from easy even to
fuse our principles and aims into a satisfactory statement. We have all
been at times entertained by the futile efforts of half a dozen highly
individualized people gathered together as a committee. Their aimless
attempts to find a common method of action have recalled the wavering
motion of a baby's arm before he has learned to cooerdinate his muscles.

If, as is many times stated, we are passing from an age of individualism
to one of association, there is no doubt that for decisive and
effective action the individual still has the best of it. He will secure
efficient results while committees are still deliberating upon the best
method of making a beginning. And yet, if the need of the times demand
associated effort, it may easily be true that the action which appears
ineffective, and yet is carried out upon the more highly developed line
of associated effort, may represent a finer social quality and have a
greater social value than the more effective individual action. It is
possible that an individual may be successful, largely because he
conserves all his powers for individual achievement and does not put any
of his energy into the training which will give him the ability to act
with others. The individual acts promptly, and we are dazzled by his
success while only dimly conscious of the inadequacy of his code.
Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in industrial relations,
as existing between the owner of a large factory and his employees.

A growing conflict may be detected between