III Information of Panacea

WITHOUT some such means of getting and spreading information there is no hope for fundamental social advance. We have agreed, have we not, that to make men happier and more capable we must divert their socially injurious impulses into beneficent channels; that we can do this only by studying those impulses and controlling the stimuli which arouse them; that we can control those stimuli only by studying the varied factors of the environment and the means of changing them; in short, that at the bottom of the direction of impulse lies the necessity of knowledge, of information spread to all who care to receive it. Autocracy may improve the world without spreading enlightenment; but democracy cannot. Delenda est ignorantia.¹

This, after all, is a plan for the democratization of aristocracy; it is Plato translated into America. It utilizes superior intelligence and gives it voice, but sanctions no change that has not received the free consent of the community. It gives the aristocracy of intellect the influence and initiative which crude democracy frustrates; but it avoids the corruption that usually goes with power, by making this influence work through the channels of persuasion rather than compulsion. It counteracts the power of wealth to disseminate partisan views through news-items and editorials, and relies on fact to get the better at last of double-leaded prejudice. It rests on the faith that lies will out.

Would the mass of the people listen to such reports? Consider, first, the repute that attaches to the professorial title. Let a man write even the sorriest nonsense but sign himself as one of the faculty of some responsible institution, and he will find a hearing; the reader, perhaps, need not go far to find an example. In recent industrial and political issues the pronouncements of a few professors carried very great weight; and there are some modest purveyors of so supposedly harmless a thing as philosophy whose voice is feared by all interests that prosper in the dark. Will the combined reputation of the most enlightened men in the country mean less? A report published by this Society for Social Research will mean that a large body of intelligent men have from their number appointed three or five or ten to find the facts of a certain situation or dispute; these appointed men will, if they report hastily, or carelessly, or dishonestly, impair the repute of all their fellows in the Society; they will take care, then, and will probably find honesty as good a policy as some of us pretend it to be. With every additional report so guarded from defect the repute of the society will grow until it becomes the most powerful intellectual force in the world.

When one reflects how many pages of misrepresentation were printed in the papers of only one city in the presidential campaign of 1916, and then imagines what would have been the effect of a mere statement of facts on both sides,—the records of the candidates and the parties, their acknowledged connections, friends and enemies, their expressed principles and programmes, the facts about the tariff, the German issue, international law, the railway-brotherhood dispute, and so forth—one begins to appreciate the importance of information. After the initial and irrevocable differences of original nature nothing is so vital as the spread of enlightenment; and nothing offers itself so well to organized effort. Eugenics is weak because it has no thought-out programme; ’isms rise and fall because people are not informed. Let who can, improve the native qualities of men; but that aside, the most promising plan is the dissemination of fact.

Such a society for research would be a sort of social consciousness, a “mind of the race.” It would make social planning possible for the first time; it would make history conscious. It would look ahead and warn; it would point the nose of the community to unwelcome but important facts; it would examine into such statements as that of Sir William Ramsay, that England’s coal fields will be exhausted in one hundred and seventy-five years; and its warnings, backed by the prestige of its expert information, would perhaps avert the ravages of social waste and private greed. Nature, said Lester Ward, is a spendthrift, man an economizer. But economy means prevision, and social economy means organized provision. Here would be not agitation, not propaganda, not moralizing, but only clarification; these men would be “merchants of light,” simply giving information so that what men should do they might do knowingly and not in the dark.

Indeed, if one can clarify one need not agitate. Just to state facts is the most terrible thing that can be done to an injustice. Sermons and stump-speeches stampede the judgment for a moment, but the sound of their perorations still lingers in the air when reaction comes. Fact has this advantage over rhetoric, that time strengthens the one and weakens the other. Tell the truth and time will be your eloquence.

Let us suppose that our Society has existed some three years; let us suppose that on the first day of every month it has spread through the press simple reports of its investigations, simple accounts of socially significant work in science, and simple statements of fact about the economic and political issues of the day; let us suppose that by far the greater part of these reports have been conscientious and accurate and clear. Very well: in the course of these three years a large number of mentally alert people all over the country will have developed the habit of reading these monthly reports; they will look forward to them, they will attach significance to them, they will herald them as events, almost as decisions. In any question of national policy its statements will influence thousands and thousands of the more independent minds. Let us calculate the number of people who, in these United States, would be reached by such reports; let us say the reports are printed in three or four New York dailies, having a total circulation of one million; in other dailies throughout the country totalling some five million circulation; and in one or more weeklies or monthlies with a large or a select circulation. One may perhaps say that out of the seven or eight million people so reached (mostly adult males), five per cent will be so influenced by the increasing prestige of the Society that they will read the reports. Of these four hundred thousand readers it is reasonable to suppose that three hundred thousand will be voters, and not only voters but men of influence among their fellows. These men will each of them be a medium through which the facts reported will be spread; it is not too much to say that the number of American voters influenced directly or indirectly by these reports will reach to a million.² Now imagine the influence of this million of voters on a presidential election. Their very existence would be a challenge; candidates would have them in mind when making promises and criticisms; parties would think of them when formulating policies and drawing up platforms; editors would beware of falling into claptrap and deceit for fear of these million men armed with combustible fact. It would mean such an elevation of political discussion and political performance as democracy has never yet produced; such an elevation as democracy must produce or die.