Blagden, Ralph M.

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Washington University St. Louis: Open Scholarship

Washington University Law Review Volume 27 Issue 1 January 1941 Review of “Life, Liberty and Property,” By Alfred Jones Ralph M. Blagden St. Louis Star-Times Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview  Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Ralph M. Blagden, Review of “Life, Liberty and Property,” By Alfred Jones, 27 WASH. U. L. Q. 144 (1941). Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol27/iss1/4 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington University Law Review by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact digital@wumail.wustl.edu. 144 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW QUARTERLY [Vol. 27BOOK REVIEWSLIFE, LIBERTY AND PRoRTY. By Alfred Winslow Jones. New York:J. P. Lippincott Company, 1941. Pp. 397. $3.50.It is hardly orthodox to begin the review of one book by commentingon another, but in this case Robert S. Lynd's "Knowledge For What?" hasa direct bearing upon the book in question, "Life, Liberty and Property."Both Lynd and Alfred Winslow Jones are sociologists and both have madetheir own terms with the traditions of social science literature. Mr. Lyndboldly challenged the basic precepts upon which the older sociologists havewritten their tracts and literature. He set forth the principle that it isthe function of those trained in social problems to do more than find thefacts; it is, according to him, their obligation to resolve "the austere find-ings of the monograph into a bold program for action." Mr. Jones doesnot do quite that, but he is considerably bolder than the school of scholarsof whom Mr. Lynd complains.Jones' book presents the results of a survey made in Akron, Ohio, in1938, extending over eight months, in which 1,705 persons were interviewed.Each interview presented a situation the answer to which revealed theinterviewees' reaction to corporate property.Selected representatives from different occupational income groups wereasked to express their opinion upon such subjects as sit-down strikes, farmmortgage foreclosures, the use of tear gas against strikers, and collectiveaction to forestall rent evictions.It was the author's thesis that by the answers to such questions lightcould be shed upon the attitude of Americans today toward the historicrights of property.The findings are not startling for they reveal no unexpected trend orcondition. The reasonably astute observer of our contemporary problemswould probably have guessed at most of the responses. Thus, it is notsurprising to discover that the farmers in Mr. Jones' survey were morereverent toward corporate property than the CIO rubber workers in Akron,and less reverent than the business and professional leaders. It is not sur-prising to learn that the majority of the interviewees were more respectfulof personal property than of corporate property, and it is not surprisingto learn that very few individuals even in the city of Akron thought inMarxist terms or that they possessed no very acute class consciousness.Most of these conclusions could have been drawn with reasonable accuracyby the thoughtful newspaper reader or certainly by those who have readthe hundreds of current books of the last decade.What is important in Mr. Jones' book is that it provides the factualdata for many of the assumptions we have accepted without adequate docu-mentation. In that respect, his work is useful and will furnish valuablefootnotes for future works that will paint on a larger canvas the pictureof America in transition.There was a day when the popular commentators on conditions in Amer-ica, and even the more scholarly social writers, evaded accurate definitions.Washington University Open ScholarshipBOOK REVIEWSThis was particularly true in dealing with class conflict. Throughout thenineteenth century, our social commentators too often attempted to solvecurrent problems by turning their backs on them. This method had beenso traditional with respect to friction between the different income groupsthat cries of rage met Mr. Roosevelt's early policies whenever they seemedto suggest that there were economic classes in the United States. It isone of the virtues of Mr. Jones' work that he meets the class issue headon, and that, while he records a lack of active class consciousness amonghis interviewees, he nevertheless discloses that they do think as classes onthe vital question of corporate property. Such realism, of course, helps usinch out of the sands of mythology closer to the light of fact. Mr. Jonesgoes somewhat further and gives us the faint outlines of a solution whenhe asserts that unless those with political power are able or willing tobring about satisfactory economic conditions "the way will be open toblind and destructive social strivings whose final consequences are unpre-dictable."Of course, such fairly obvious and moderate prescriptions are a farcry from the Lynd demand for bold social programs, but they do representa disposition on the part of Jones to assume some responsibility for hisown discoveries.If we had found any reason for disagreeing or doubting the accuracyof the author's findings, we might criticize the selection of Akron as theproper place in which to have conducted this study. Akron, the home ofmost of the larger rubber corporations, is exceptional as a one-industrytown, and for the last five years industrial warfare has been particularlybitter there. One could hardly expect to discover in such an environmenta perfectly average reaction among the people.But it is not merely in the economic field that absorbing inferences maybe drawn from "Life, Liberty and Property." There is ample material tostimulate the psychologist and the fiction writer. In attacking or definingcorporate property, Mr. Jones' human guinea pigs were discouraginglygoverned by their own private interests. Almost without exception theyappraised the rights of corporations on the basis of how corporate insti-tutions affected their own livelihood and hope of advancement. One can-not read the results of Mr. Jones' study without being reminded of thecynicism of Vernon Parrington who came to see the American scene asone precariously constructed on the shifting soil of acquisition and thepassion for gain.The problem posed by Mr. Jones is indisputably economic, political, andlegal; but it is also strongly moral, and while Mr. Jones probably had noidea that his effort would remind any reviewer of what a mere fiction writermay have said, the fact nevertheless remains that this writer was led by"Life, Liberty and Property" to recall the closing chapter in ThomasWolfe's "You Cannot Go Home Again," wherein the evils and failures ofsociety throughout the world were reduced to the failure of individualsthrough the ages to subordinate greed and selfishness to the more ethicalpatterns of human behavior. RALPH M. BLAGDEN.-t Managing Editor, St. Louis Star-Times.1941]https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol27/iss1/4

Review of “Life, Liberty and Property,” By Alfred Jones

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Review of “Life, Liberty and Property,” By Alfred Jones

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