ife as carried on according to the
traditional scheme may not be lower than under the earlier conditions;
but the chances are always that it is less than might be if the scheme
were altered to suit the altered conditions.

The group is made up of individuals, and the group's life is the life
of individuals carried on in at least ostensible severalty. The group's
accepted scheme of life is the consensus of views held by the body of
these individuals as to what is right, good, expedient, and beautiful in
the way of human life. In the redistribution of the conditions of life
that comes of the altered method of dealing with the environment, the
outcome is not an equable change in the facility of life throughout the
group. The altered conditions may increase the facility of life for
the group as a whole, but the redistribution will usually result in a
decrease of facility or fullness of life for some members of the
group. An advance in technical methods, in population, or in industrial
organization will require at least some of the members of the community
to change their habits of life, if they are to enter with facility and
effect into the altered industrial methods; and in doing so they will be
unable to live up to the received notions as to what are the right and
beautiful habits of life.

Any one who is required to change his habits of life and his habitual
relations to his fellow men will feel the discrepancy between the
method of life required of him by the newly arisen exigencies, and
the traditional scheme of life to which he is accustomed. It is the
individuals placed in this position who have the liveliest incentive to
reconstruct the received scheme of life and are most readily persuaded
to accept new standards; and it is through the need of the means of
livelihood that men are placed in such a position. The pressure exerted
by the environment upon the group, and making for a readjustment of the
group's scheme of life, impinges upon the members of the group in
the form of pecuniary exigencies; and it is owing to this fact--that
external forces are in great part translated into the form of pecuniary
or economic exigencies--it is owing to this fact that we can say that
the forces which count toward a readjustment of institutions in any
modern industrial community are chiefly economic forces; or more
specifically, these forces take the form of pecuniary pressure. Such a
readjustment as is here contemplated is subst