ether capital punishment
is good or evil; whether private property is an adequate
or inadequate institution for social welfare; whether marriage
is a perfect or an imperfect institution; whether collective
bargaining, competitive industry, old age insurance, income
taxes, nationalization of railroads are useful or pernicious
depends neither on their age nor their novelty. Their value
is determined by their relevancy to our own ideals, by the
extent to which they hinder or promote the results which we
consciously desire.

The past may be studied with a view to clarifying present
issues. In the first place, we may study past successes and
failures in order to guide our actions in present similar situations.
A man setting out to organize and administer a newspaper
will benefit by the experiences others have had in the
same situation. In the same way, we can learn from past
history something, at least, bearing on present political and
social issues. It is true enough that history has been much
misused for the drawing of lessons and guidance. As Professor
Robinson says:

To-day, however, one rarely finds a historical student who would
venture to recommend statesmen, warriors, and moralists to place
any confidence whatsoever in historical analogies and warnings, for
the supposed analogies usually prove illusive on inspection, and the
warnings impertinent. Whether or no Napoleon was ever able in his
own campaigns to make any practical use of the accounts he had
read of those of Alexander and Caesar, it is quite certain that Admiral
Togo would have derived no useful hints from Nelson's tactics at
Alexandria or Trafalgar. Our situation is so novel that it would
seem as if political and military precedents of even a century ago
could have no possible value. As for our present "anxious morality,"
as Maeterlinck calls it, it seems equally clear that the sinful
extravagances of Sardanapalus and Nero, and the conspicuous public virtue
of Aristides and the Horatii, are alike impotent to promote it.[1]

[Footnote 1: Robinson: _The New History_, p. 36.]

But situations are, within limits, duplicated in historical
processes, and it is illuminating at least to see wherein men
failed and wherein they succeeded in the things they set themselves
to do. The history of labor legislation certainly testifies
to the effectiveness of "collective bargaining" in securing
improved labor conditions, as the history of strikes does also
to the p