Justice and Society
THE National Conference of Social Work is one of the oldest and most valuable of American organizations concerned with the alleviation of social misery. This year its president has been Dr. John...
...relations between the two may be thus stated concretely: "We feed the starving man who has not food to eat nor work by which he may earn it, but justice demands the establishment of the principle that society is bound to provide the opportunity to everyone to earn a living...
...To be consistent these same destructlonists go so far as to condemn any and all control of conduct...
...The other side to the program of justice," Dr...
...Millions of our fellowmen cannot solve the economic and social puzzles of modern life...
...Lapp determines as one notable advance toward the reign of justice the establishment of workingmen's compensation, and advocates as another the adoption of social insurance...
...Lapp's comments on the subject deserve a wide reading...
...and If alcoholic beverages are not a good...
...Lapp proceeds to say, "is protection against the social causes of destitution and decay...
...From four to five million people actually recipients of material relief...
...The very existence of society depends upon Its willingness not to repose upon a starkly impossible and heartrendingly burdensome code...
...Lapp to prove it against the conviction of millions of reasonably normal citizens and to take into cognizance, among other things, an inconvenient biblical example...
...The question of the scope of government in the establishment of justice is a very great and ominous question...
...Charity, he believes, "points the way to justice...
...After reading a paragraph like this, one is inclined to feel that the very sincere and enthusiastic author momentarily overlooked the virtue of temperance...
...Out of a pastoral society mankind plunged with almost catastrophic suddenness into an industrial maelstrom, wherein "the individual has become helpless to cope with the new forces...
...Apparently nothing...
...John A. Lapp, whose work as director of the Department of Social Action, National Catholic Welfare Conference, has done so much to awaken and solidify Catholic energies...
...Lapp's phrase, "Justice requires that opportunity be given to everyone to reahze his best self," means anything it Is that everyone Is justly entitled to the use of such good things as may help to develop him...
...a million and a quarter in institutions for defectives, dependents and delinquents...
...If there Is more individualistic cant in this country than previously, a good sociologist ought to be interested in determining the cause...
...We must avoid on the one hand repression of legitimate Individuality and on the other all selfish and foolish fears of "paternalism...
...What may the government regulate, control or prohibit If not such human destroyers as habit-forming drugs or Intoxicating liquors...
...And lo...
...A great army, one in every ten, of the population marches in the shadow of poverty...
...we have the anarchistic state...
...This is "the goal and as it is attained, the obligations of charity are taken over by the institutions of justice...
...Much contained in it is of the greatest interest, even though Dr...
...During the past two centuries greater emphasis upon this principle has been made necessary by vast changes in habits of living...
...Even the prohibition' of habit-forming drugs is to them an infringement of personal liberty...
...This ought sometime to suggest that possibly the enforcement is the source not merely of the opposition but also of the anarchy...
...It remains for Dr...
...His address to the National Conference, which met this year at Des Moines, Iowa, on May 11, dealt with the problem of justice as that affects social relations...
...This is violently opposed by all advocates of the vicious principle of laissez-faire...
...The...
...From this point of view, he holds, "government is the only agency that can protect men in their essential integrity...
...Progress toward justice has been made, but the record of contemporary conditions is dark enough...
...Indeed the opposition to liquor enforcement may lead to anarchy...
...Lapp never ceases to be quite as individual as the most personal could desire...
...They go so far "as to challenge the right of government regulation of almost anything or any...
...That is obviously only one thing—the conviction of a great many fairly intelligent persons that intoxicating liquor and habit-forming drugs cannot be bracketed scientifically or logically, and that there is a similar divergence between regulation and prohibition...
...Twelve million people in the United States suffer' at this/ moment from the calamity of destitution or Its near approach...
...five hundred thousand dependent children in the care of public or private benevolences...
...nine million at the free dispensaries for medical aid...
...If Dr...
...There is more individualistic—not to say anarchistic— cant in this country than at any previous time...
...The anti-prohibitionists with their cry of personal liberty, founded though it is upon individual selfishness, have about wrecked the true conception of government control of evils...
Vol. 6 • May 1927 • No. 3
